Well I was about to post this when I fixed my own problem. I'll just summarise how I fixed my problem in hopes that it helps someone having the same issue I did.
The problem I had was that I couldn't program the ATiny84 with my arduino mega 1280 clone. I kept getting the error:
avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00
Tried everything, capacitors, resistors on the rest pin, various reset button presses etc nothing worked.
Tutorials available always used other versions of the arduino board and do not apply to the mega!
The issue was twofold. First the pins mentioned in the tutorials aren't the same on the mega.
Here are the actual pins (theyre shown in the arduinoISP example that comes with version 1.0.4 of the IDE)
// 53: slave reset
// 51: MOSI
// 50: MISO
// 52: SCK
I also needed to update to 1.0.4 and upload the arduinoISP that come with that version (it appeared to be slightly different that the 1.0 version which might be why it works now). In the end I used the 10uF capacitor, which all tutorials mention, between the reset and ground pins of the arduino.
The other thing I noticed, for some reason pin0 (in the code) translates to pin13 on the attiny (Had a hell of a time wondering why the upload worked but the simplest circuit ever wasn't working...)
Anyway hope someone finds this helpful!
