[SOLVED] Programming Arduino Pro Mini with Mega Pro as ISP : Programmer not ..

Not the most glorious fix, I had forgotten to solder the RST pin on the Mega Pro...


Hello,

I am trying to use my Arduino Mega Pro (with USB-serial converter) as an ISP programmer to flash an Arduino Pro Mini (3.3V, 8MHZ, Atmega328p). The reason why I'm not using the conventional way is to get rid of the booting time associated with the bootloader that is otherwise required.

I have successfully loaded the ISP sketch on the Mega, wired a 10 uF across GND and RST and wired the two boards as following (Mega Pro pinout/Mini Pro pinout)

Mega Mini
D51 (MOSI) <-> 11 (MOSI)
D50 (MISO) <-> 12 (MISO)
D52 (SCK) <-> 13 (SCK)
D10 (RST) <-> RST
3.3V <-> 3.3V
GND <-> GND

In the sketch to be uploaded on the mini, I selected Arduino as ISP as programmer and flash using Sketch > Upload with a programmer but every attempt results in a not in sync error :

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00

There must something I'm missing here.

Any help much appreciated !

could you post the whole error code ?

There it is :

avrdude: Version 6.3-20190619
         Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
         Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Joerg Wunsch

         System wide configuration file is "/Users/valeremazeauroy/Library/Arduino15/packages/arduino/tools/avrdude/6.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf"
         User configuration file is "/Users/valeremazeauroy/.avrduderc"
         User configuration file does not exist or is not a regular file, skipping

         Using Port                    : /dev/cu.usbserial-1410
         Using Programmer              : stk500v1
         Overriding Baud Rate          : 19200
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 3 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 4 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 5 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 6 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 7 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 8 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 9 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00

avrdude done.  Thank you.

There is some problem with the configuration file check that out

From this thread it looks like it's normal ?

Could you post the diagram of the connection you have made ?

Mega Mini
D51 (MOSI) <-> 11 (MOSI)
D52 (MISO) <-> 12 (MISO) Should be D50 on the Mega
D53 (SCK) <-> 13 (SCK) Should be D52 on the Mega
D10 (RST) <-> RST
3.3V <-> 3.3V
GND <-> GND

Here is the exact schematic if it can help :

So I just remembered that the Mega pro does not come with soldered headers and being lazy I did not solder all of the pins. RST was one of them. I soldered it, ran avrdude, done. Thank you for taking the time to reply and sorry for wasting your time :slight_smile: