AVR-Chat

John,

I missed the post about your problem, or it happened while I was away 
from the list.  I too had an upgrade blow out an AVRISP several months back.

Lesson learned - never, ever, never ever do a software/firmware upgrade 
at 0300 on the day you're supposed to do a prototype dog and pony show 
for a customer...unless you have at least 2 backups.  I was able to use 
an STK500 and the Atmel rep was kind enough to air freight a replacement 
ISP to me.  Now our motto is "Have backup hardware, will muddle through 
when necessary".

Anyway, it appears that if we do a firmware upgrade with the ISP plugged 
into the system all kinds of bad things are subject to occur.  It also 
helped me to read the instructions (also known as RTFMC), especially the 
part that states we need to do the update with only power and ground 
connected to the ISP.  I never was able to recover the old ISP after 
wiping it out and sent it back to Atmel as the rep and I did a swap out.

I seem to remember Dave Van Horn also blowing one out a while back but 
don't remember if that was due to a similar mistake.  Maybe he can 
enlighten us.

I know this doesn't answer your question.  This is more a cautionary 
note to have a set of clip leads and some .025" square pins handy when 
doing firmware upgrades.


REB


John Samperi wrote:

>G'day
>
>You may remember I send a message saying that I had
>uploaded tools files from older version of Studio
>in case someone may need them in the future to upgrade or
>downgrade their tools to another version of Studio.
>
>I had the wrong version for Studio 4.11 they were in fact
>for Studio 4.09. They have now been corrected and added the
>correct Studio 4.11 SP2 files also.
>
>As some of you may know I had a disaster with Studio 4.12
>destroying my AVRISP with the usual update fiasco that many
>come across.
>
>I still need the firmware for the 1200 chip which I deleted <:-|
>but it needs to be for an AVRISP with a Mega 8535 in it. I have
>build some firmware that sort of works from parts of the 1200
>code form an older AVRISP and added support for the M8535.
>
>Studio 4.09 and 4.11 were quite happy to work with it and now
>I'm back to were I was about 2 weeks ago, with a working AVRISP
>but with version 2.0 of the firmware. Studio 4.12 doesn't want to
>know about it and trying to upgrade fails....which is just as
>well or it may destroy it again.... >:-o
>
>Regards
>
>John Samperi
>
>********************************************************
>Ampertronics Pty. Ltd.
>11 Brokenwood Place Baulkham Hills, NSW 2153 AUSTRALIA
>Tel. (02) 9674-6495       Fax (02) 9674-8745
>Email: john@ampertronics.com.au
>Website  http://www.ampertronics.com.au
>*Electronic Design * Custom Products * Contract Assembly
>  
>