Upload sketch on an ATMega328, Burn Bootloader Again?

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

Hi there,

I have a question: If I burn a bootloader on an ATMega328 and upload a sketch and after some time I want to upload a new sketch, do I have to burn the bootloader again on the ATMega328?

I ask because I uploaded a sketch and after that I wanted to upload another sketch but I got the following error message:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding

But after burning the bootloader again at the ATMega, it uploaded the sketch without any problems.

(Btw: I followed this tutorial: http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoToBreadboard without the External Clock. Since I have an Arduino Uno SMD, I tied the "Reset-PIN" of the Arduino to GND.)

I have another short question: If I burned the bootloader, is there a possibility to remove it afterwards so that I can use the ATMega in a "regular way"?

Thanks in advance for your answers!

2

You should only need to burn the bootloader once.

radogost:
I tied the "Reset-PIN" of the Arduino to GND

A reset pin tied to ground doesn't sound like a good idea, the pin requires just a LOW pulse at the right time.

And finally... yes, a bootloader can be removed at any time using a programmer.

3

Do you have the cap + DTR line hooked up correctly and all for auto-reset?

If auto-reset isn't working, you'll be able to upload a sketch once through the bootloader, but after that, it'll be running the sketch, and without autoreset, it won't run the bootloader, so it can't upload using it.

4

Ok, I see, I misunderstood something. I thought that for an Arduino Uno SMD the reset pin has to be tied to ground all the time while uploading a sketch.

Do you have the cap + DTR line hooked up correctly and all for auto-reset?

What do you mean by that?