I have a small project for POV home, with 8 Red Leds, 1 RGB Led, 1 LDR, 1 Termistor, 4-in-1 resistor-divisor keys and 1 capacitive sensor, all using the libraries from Arduino.cc, but I will make a bare-bone-board arduino to control all and I want use pins 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,12 for pov red leds, pins 9,10,11 for PWM RGB led, and analog 0-5 to calibrate and inputs. I will program atmega8L at bare-bone-board using the arduinoISP.
Can I use the pins 0 (RX), 1 (TX), reprogram as simple output/input pins without lose bootloader action?
There is no "re-programming" needed. The bootloader will be overwritten when you program the chip through ISP. Don't forget to change the fuses ("NO bootloader")
I want the bootloader "alive" as a common arduino-like board, for easy development api.
This is not easily possible when you have connect pins 0 and 1
But maybe I do not understand fully..
A mega8 is a $2 device, so just buy a dozen of them...
And you can also program them with an ISP, from the Arduino IDE!
As soon as you have an ISP you have many, many options.