AVR-Chat

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Frank" <transistortoaster@...> wrote:

> For the hardware bootloader,
> I'm a bit confused.

Maybe you could clarify what you mean by a "hardware bootloader".  Many 
AVRs have the ability to sort-of cordon off part of the Flash for a 
program that can accept a new application firmware image from somewhere 
(such as the serial port) and program it into the main Flash.  Atmel 
refers to this as a bootloader, although traditionally a bootloader 
does something quite different.  But, this "bootloader" is still 
firmware that you program into the chip and that disappears when you 
erase the chip.  A hardware bootloader, in my experience, is held in 
the chip in ROM (and so can't be erased) and loads the application 
(perhaps from a serial port) into RAM and executes it from there.  The 
AVRs don't have this.  They have no ROM and can't execute from RAM.

Graham.