Aurdino IDE Why do I have to choose "Pro or Pro Mini" in the Tools/Board Manager, to get it work when I have a Nano
Because you have either a very old official Nano or else a low quality Chinese derivative board.
Try this:
- Select Tools > Board > Arduino AVR Boards > Arduino Nano from the Arduino IDE menus.
- Select Tools > Processor > ATmega328P (Old Bootloader) from the Arduino IDE menus.
- Try uploading to your board.
Arduino Nano boards made before 2018 used the same buggy bootloader as the "Pro Mini" board. Arduino switched to using the state of the art Optiboot bootloader on the Nano boards in 2018, and so the Tools > Processor > ATmega328P (Old Bootloader) menu item was added to support the boards with the old bootloader. Some of the Chinese derivative board makers still haven't gotten the memo after 4.5 years and are still shipping boards with the obsolete bootloader.
Thanks for your answer. Now I know why. First I bought was in 2015 and 2021 I bought more from Amazon.se. Now when I try to start one I have forgotten I had before, in the board manager, used Pro Mini . It seems that, last bought, they are also with the old bootloader. The maker is TECNOIOT .
It works fine for me, but I donot know what I is missing from the new bootloader
You are welcome. I'm glad it is working now.
That is cool you have Nanos from so far back. I also have some of that vintage that have been lucky enough to avoid "magic smoke incidents" as subjects in my fumbling experiments.
It is unfortunate that the manufacturers still haven't updated the bootloader files they flash. It causes a lot of suffering for their customers. Even if only for the sake of their reviews and tech support burden, I would think they would update them. It is understandable that there would be some lag time as the old stock was used up, but 4.5 years?
This bug is the reason Arduino changed to the Optiboot bootloader:
(the old Nano and Pro Minis use the same bootloader, so even though the issue mentions Pro Mini explicitly, the bug affects any board with that bootloader)
The ATmega328P microcontroller has a "watchdog timer". One use of this timer is to provide resiliency to program hangs in a device by automatically resetting the board if the timer times out. Some people also write their code to intentionally cause the timer to time out when they want a reset.
The bug in the old "ATmegaBOOT" bootloader caused the board to go into an infinite reset loop when this happened. It is possible to recover the board from that reset loop, but it is a bit complicated and not fun for the average user. Optiboot handles the watchdog reset correctly, so the boards with Optiboot won't suffer from this reset loop. So it is a serious bug, but fortunately it only affects a small number of users because most Arduino users don't use the watchdog timer resets.
So my advice is to not worry about the fact your boards have the old bootloader. If you do eventually find the need to use the watchdog timer resets, we will be happy to provide you with instructions for updating your bootloader.
If you have a Nano with the new bootloader, you can update the others.
I've done it with several, never an issue. Had gotten tired of guessing which bootloader I needed with each one.
Thank you for your information. How do I know that I have the new bootloader on my Uno`s
Regards Lars
Den lör 1 okt. 2022 23:59Camsys via Arduino Forum <notifications@arduino.discoursemail.com> skrev:
There is no such thing as a new bootloader or an old bootloader on the Uno boards. Arduino used the Optiboot bootloader on the Uno from the very start and I have not heard of any of the Uno clone or derivative boards using other bootloaders either.
The "old bootloader"/"new bootloader" thing is mainly only of concern with the Nano boards. There was an update to the bootloader on the Mega, but that happened well over a decade ago and I have not seen any posts about the Mega boards with the old bootloader for quite a few years so I think they have mostly all either burned up or else been updated by their users by now.
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