What's the best way to clone the whole SW in CPU and preventing others doing it

Other Hardware 3rd Party Boards
1

I have to make two or more Arduino Mega2560 R3 clones. Is AVRISP 2 the best way to read the whole sw from a AVR CPU. I mean bootloader, flags(fuses) and the application(sketch), all what is needed.

What fuses are needed to stop others reading the software.

2

LMI:
I have to make two or more Arduino Mega2560 R3 clones. Is AVRISP 2 the best way to read the whole sw from a AVR CPU. I mean bootloader, flags(fuses) and the application(sketch), all what is needed.

Actually any ICSP or parallel programmer will allow you to read/write to flash memory. Even another arduino board running the arduino as ISP sketch will act as a ISP programmer.

What fuses are needed to stop others reading the software.

You should really download a copy of the Atmel AVR atmega2560 datasheet to learn about what and how the lock bit fuses work. It can be tricky but they will allow you to do what you wish to do.
Lefty

3

And you should understand that the fuses do not stop everyone from reading your software. It only makes it hard enough to stop most (but not all) amateurs Hacking the PIC 18F1320 « bunnie's blog. There are professional companies that specialize on reverse engineering. For them this is a trivial routine job.

4

ehm.. 20cm of re-enforced concrete

just joking.. i think everything is hackable.

5

Of course everything is hackable. There is always a big enough hammer to break any lock. The question is always how valuable the protected thing and how expensive the hammer :wink: I was pointing at the original question that did not specify how valuable the code is and how resourcefol the "others" are.

6

I did not notice there were more answers. The first answer was not very helpful.

What I know CPUs have a way to put memory read only mode, so that it is difficult to read them normally from outside. I dont think AVR CPU would miss that. I dont think anyone would open the CPU to see our programs. But of course CIA, FBI and the rest have other ways to get our highly valuable bug swarm.

7

I dont think anyone would open the CPU to see our programs

Sometimes it is just easier to reproduce the functionality, without necessarily copying the software, black-box style. The new software may work even better than the original.

8

True.

With those copy protect bits direct copying is not too easy.