UNO bootloader with FTDI and other TTL USB adapter?

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

I have a quick question. I have been using Duemilanove bootloader to bootload my ATMEGA328 chips and load sketches with FTDI or other TTL USB adapters. I now have an UNO. If I bootload my chips with UNO bootloader, can I upload sketches to these chips with FTDI or other TTL USB adapter or can I only load sketch with the UNO's 8u2 chip? I just need yes no answer from those that did this already. Thanks.

2

I know you can use the Uno bootloader on other chips, you just have to tell the IDE that the boards are Unos, even if they aren't.

I don't think the MCU actually knows the difference between the Uno's usb-serial chip and the older FTDI chip.

3

You can upload to chips burnt with optiboot bootloader. But you have to reset it manually after uploading to run skecth.

4

Bobnova:
I know you can use the Uno bootloader on other chips, you just have to tell the IDE that the boards are Unos, even if they aren't.

Correct, this is so the IDE tells the uploader program AVRDUDE what baudrate to use to upload. The Uno bootloader runs at a higher baudrate then the prior 328 bootloaders.

I don't think the MCU actually knows the difference between the Uno's usb-serial chip and the older FTDI chip.

Correct again. The on-board 328 has no idea or cares about what kind of USB serial converter chip or cable is being used, it's just serial receive and serial send lines as far the 328 chip is concerned. On the Arduino IDE side it also doesn't care what kind of USB device is being used, it just talks to the OS via a comm port number. It's the OS USB driver software that has to be set-up properly for the actual kind of USB serial converter chip or cable that is being used.

5

Awesome! I will try to bootload a few of my phi-panels with uno. The uno bootloader seems to wait less time at startup also. So if my panel starts as quickly as an uno, it wouldn't miss any info sent right after startup of an UNO.

6

Reporting back! I re-bootloaded 5 of my ATMEGA328 with UNO bootloaders. All went well. The UNO bootloader seems to start very fast. From power on till setup runs (I had it turn on buzzer to beep) it felt like just 1 second instead of several seconds with duemilanove bootloader. How long was the wait?

BTW, I just finished assembling 5 phi-panel serial LCD keypad terminals. Will post them for sale soon. I'm waiting for cables so they can be easily connected to an arduino.