Serial programing

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Dear friends,

First check out this wonderful video:

How to program the Picaxe 08, 08m, or 08m2

It shows how a picaxe micro-controller can be programed directly (without any board) via the serial port of a PC.

Is such a thing possible with Atmega chips?

2

geekyworld:
Dear friends,

First check out this wonderful video:

How to program the Picaxe 08, 08m, or 08m2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4MSPeDeDoY

It shows how a picaxe micro-controller can be programed directly (without any board) via the serial port of a PC.

Is such a thing possible with Atmega chips?

That's possible because those chips are RS232 torelable and they have a bootloader.
Atmega do have bootloaders too, but they need a max232 for voltage shift (RS232 to TTL) or they get bricked (haven't read datasheet though).