AVR-Chat

Good points Alex.

I'm new to programming AVRs. I don't claim to have invented anything new 
here but I thought other newbies might also find some value in my article.

I initially started in microprocessors with BasicX (http://basicx.com/ ) 
which provides a simple entry point without any additional tools or 
hardware. BasicX is probably one of the more sophisticated 
implementations of its kind with built in support of multitasking and 
floating point numbers.

So now I wanted a simple entry point into AVR programming. Of course I 
could have just bought a AVR ISP from Digikey but its more fun to learn 
by doing it yourself. Besides my programmer cost me less than $10. The 
AVR910 protocol is slow but then my programs are not going to be that 
big in the beginning.

As you say you need some type of programmer to bootstrap yourself up the 
chain. I have already looked at some bootloaders and now I can use my 
simple programmer to get one loaded.

I appreciate the link in your append to Martin's site. His EverTool 
looks interesting too but in reality I will probably simply buy a JTAG 
ICE clone rather than build one when the time comes.

I have already setup a WinAVR environment and I'm using Eclipse 
(http://eclipse.org/ ) and its C/C++ plugin (http://www.eclipse.org/cdt/ 
) to build programs. I'm not planning to ever program in assembler. In 
my view, Eclipse provides a very nice programming environment and makes 
compilation and debugging very easy. Nowadays most people have fast 
Internet connections so the size of the download is not a problem.

Mike

> > I just completed building my own programmer based on the
> > AVR910 app note
> > (http://atmel.com/dyn/resources/prod_documents/DOC0943.PDF ) and the
> > helpful notes and code I found on this website:
> > http://www.serasidis.gr/circuits/avr_isp/avr_isp.htm.
>
> The problem with this AVR910 programmer is that it is so slow.... I have
> used it but only when I had to. Mostly I used the MegaLoad Bootloader on a
> Mega8 so I used the AVR910 programmer to load the bootloader and then just
> used the bootloader which is _really_ fast.
>
> However, I finally brought the ATAVRISP serial programmer for about US$29
> from digikey, but you may want to look at this project:
> http://www.siwawi.arubi.uni-kl.de/avr_projects/avrispre/index.html however
> consider the cheapness of the real thing - is it worth it?
>
> Alex
>