AVR-Chat

It would be redundant to get both the STK500 and the MAVRIC.  The STK500 is
a development platform & programmer.  The MAVRIC is simply a development
board with the biggest AVR chip available.  The STK500 will come with at
least one CPU to play with.

You could just get the MAVRIC and build up a programming dongle (I am sure
Brian has a simple one illustrated on his website) and go at it.  But you
definitely don't need both for learning.

Personally, I recommend the STK500.  It is cheap, flexible and has both ISP
and parallel programming modes available and can supply it's own clock
signal.  The latter can be *INVALUABLE* when you select innapropriate bits
while programming the fuses of the AVR chips.  And it handles all flavors of
AVR chips - something that comes in very handy as your skills grow.

Cheers!
-----Original Message-----
From: Brandon Tolbert

Just joined up and I am glad to find a group like this. I have an interest
in
Atmel microcontrollers and would like to know if you guys think a good start
point would be to acquire an STK500 and one of the Mavric II boards with the
MEGA128. My goal is to simply teach myself how to program and understand
microcontrollers. Any advice would be appreciated. -Brandon