AVR-Chat

Where do I find an ATmega88, the suped-up ATmega8?

I'm an AVR newbie. If I develop on an ATmega32, would it be simple to
port the code to an ATmega8 or 88?

Thanks,

Scott

Generally speaking, like walking and chewing gum.

The AVR have pretty regular I/O & peripherals between the chips.  The bigger
chips have more features but tend to be supersets of the smaller chips
rather than different.  Porting code from one to another often is no more
than swapping in the right interrupt vector table with everything else being
the same.

-----Original Message-----
From: scott5342000 [mailto:scott5342000@yahoo.com]
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2004 10:06 PM
To: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [AVR-Chat] ATmega88 ???


Where do I find an ATmega88, the suped-up ATmega8?

I'm an AVR newbie. If I develop on an ATmega32, would it be simple to
port the code to an ATmega8 or 88?

Thanks,

Scott





Yahoo! Groups Links

At 10:46 PM 6/14/2004 -0700, Larry Barello wrote:

>Generally speaking, like walking and chewing gum.
>
>The AVR have pretty regular I/O & peripherals between the chips.  The bigger chips have more features but tend to be supersets of the smaller chips rather than different.  Porting code from one to another often is no more than swapping in the right interrupt vector table with everything else being the same.

One of the nicest features of the AVR line. 
Take a 2343, with one timer, one external int, some ram, EE, and registers.  I can take code from that chip, and drop it into a Mega-128 with only very minor tweaks. :)

It's nice not having to relearn every peripheral, when you change chips within a family.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, David VanHorn <dvanhorn@c...> wrote:
> At 10:46 PM 6/14/2004 -0700, Larry Barello wrote:
> 
> >Generally speaking, like walking and chewing gum.
> >
> >The AVR have pretty regular I/O & peripherals between the chips.
...
> It's nice not having to relearn every peripheral, when you change
chips within a family.

The PIC's are like that too, which is what I'm familiar with.
AVR'appear to have more bang for the buck and they are offering a
JTAGICE coupon with their seminars, which doesn't burn ATmega8/88 but
will burn ATmega32's.

Now if I knew where to find an ATmega88. It doesn't look like Digikey,
Arrow, et. are stocking them.

Scott

Scott,

Could you be looking for an ATMega128? That is the bigger part with more
goodies.

Al Welch

-----Original Message-----
From: scott5342000 [mailto:scottxs@comcast.net]
Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2004 1:57 PM
To: AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com
Subject: [AVR-Chat] Re: ATmega88 ???


--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, David VanHorn <dvanhorn@c...> wrote:
> At 10:46 PM 6/14/2004 -0700, Larry Barello wrote:
>
> >Generally speaking, like walking and chewing gum.
> >
> >The AVR have pretty regular I/O & peripherals between the chips.
...
> It's nice not having to relearn every peripheral, when you change
chips within a family.

The PIC's are like that too, which is what I'm familiar with.
AVR'appear to have more bang for the buck and they are offering a
JTAGICE coupon with their seminars, which doesn't burn ATmega8/88 but
will burn ATmega32's.

Now if I knew where to find an ATmega88. It doesn't look like Digikey,
Arrow, et. are stocking them.

Scott





Yahoo! Groups Links

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Al Welch" <alwelch@a...> wrote:
> Scott,
> 
> Could you be looking for an ATMega128? That is the bigger part with
more
> goodies.

Indeed, but I want cheap. it lists (Digikey) $8 and the ATmega88 lists
$2. The ATmega88 is an improved ATmega8 (doc2553.pdf) 
"
• Extended operating ranges as e.g.
4MHz@1.8V, 10MHz@2.7V, 20MHz@4.5V
• Lower Power Consumption
• Decreased EEPROM write time
• Prescaler on system clock
• On-Chip Debugging with debugWire
• Pin Change Interrupt
• Enhanced Watchdog Timer with Interrupt mode
• 10 bit resolution on all ADC channels
• Timer/Counter0,2 extended with PWM and Compare units
• Master SPI mode in the USART
• General Purpose I/O Registers
• Output the system clock on I/O pin"

The extended PWM CCP-timers and debug-wire interest me. But they don't
seem to be available.

Scott

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "scott5342000" <scottxs@c...> wrote:

> Indeed, but I want cheap. it lists (Digikey) $8 
> and the ATmega88 lists  $2. The ATmega88 is an 
> improved ATmega8 (doc2553.pdf) 

Checked...I believe the problem here is that you
are looking at a non-stock item.  Non-stock items
are often "cheaper" because the ONLY way you can 
get them is in bulk.  Checking the MINIMUM ORDERS
on those you'll notice you'd have to buy a minimum
of 280 units!!!

You could get the mega8 from digikey for $2.30
if you'd buy in lots of 25 ($57 total) or only 
$2.13 in lots of 100.

At 01:03 AM 6/16/2004 +0000, scott5342000 wrote:

>--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Al Welch" <alwelch@a...> wrote:
>> Scott,
>> 
>> Could you be looking for an ATMega128? That is the bigger part with
>more
>> goodies.
>
>Indeed, but I want cheap. it lists (Digikey) $8 and the ATmega88 lists
>$2. The ATmega88 is an improved ATmega8 (doc2553.pdf) 
>"
>• Extended operating ranges as e.g.
>4MHz@1.8V, 10MHz@2.7V, 20MHz@4.5V

How fast does the on-chip RC go?

I did a four inch thermal printer controller in the M8 (204 dpi and almost 2000 lines/sec) , but more horsepower is always welcome.  Getting the SPI up to 5 MHz would have helped.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "scott5342000" <scottxs@c...> wrote:

> The PIC's are ... what I'm familiar with.
> AVR'appear to have more bang for the buck ...

If you have a PIC that is roughly equivalent to the ATmega64, would 
you consider running my Dhrystone benchmark and telling us the result?
http://www.ecrostech.com/Other/Resources/Dhrystone.htm

> [Atmel] are offering a
> JTAGICE coupon with their seminars ...

That still makes it $200, right?  I have developed a "clone" of the 
JTAG-ICE which I would like to sell in the $40 to $50 range. It takes 
its power from the target system, 3 to 5.5 V, and cuts some other 
corners to keep the cost down, but it runs the code loaded from AVR 
Studio and seems to work just fine. Could I get a reading of whether 
people are going to want this or not?

Graham.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Graham Davies" <YahooGroups@e...> wrote:
> --- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "scott5342000" <scottxs@c...> wrote:
 
> If you have a PIC that is roughly equivalent to the ATmega64, would 
> you consider running my Dhrystone benchmark and telling us the result?

If I ever have the opportunity, I don't now.

> > JTAGICE coupon with their seminars ...
> 
> That still makes it $200, right?

It sounded to me like it was free. Probably because they came out with
an mkII version that handles more of their chips.

  I have developed a "clone" of the 
> JTAG-ICE which I would like to sell in the $40 to $50 range.

Something like is at http://home.sch.bme.hu/~cell/atmel/AVR_JTAG/ ?
I found one at sourceforge.net too.

Anyone build either of these?

I'm miffed Microchip stopped supporting their ICD 1. I wanted to use
some cheap little 16F88 and 16F7x7's, but I'll have a look at Atmel's
offerings. I notice Atmel has a document (doc2524.pdf AVR060: JTAG ICE
Communication Protocol) detailing the communication between AVR Studio
and the dongle. If only Microchip would do the same...

Scott

>
>That still makes it $200, right?  I have developed a "clone" of the 
>JTAG-ICE which I would like to sell in the $40 to $50 range. It takes 
>its power from the target system, 3 to 5.5 V, and cuts some other 
>corners to keep the cost down, but it runs the code loaded from AVR 
>Studio and seems to work just fine. Could I get a reading of whether 
>people are going to want this or not?

Sure. 
At that price, it's not worth my time to roll my own.

The raw component cost though, is low enough that I could see someone designing it right into a system, with the intent of only populating it in the prototyping stages.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, David VanHorn <dvanhorn@c...> wrote:
> 
> >
> >It sounded to me like it was free. Probably because they came out with
> >an mkII version that handles more of their chips.
> 
> It's not free, at least not according to arrow or digikey.

Atmel is giving seminars across the country (see their web site) and
as a promotion, giving you a JTAGICE OR a $100 coupon (enough for an
STK500?). Which would you choose? Perhaps I should have asked for the
coupon, because it sounds, just like Microchip, they are abandoning
their first-model for the MkII. Must not be enough money in supporting
cheap entry-level tools.

But the cheap tools get small businesses hooked on their products. If
Atmel wasn't giving a seminar and the JTAG-ICE, I would grudglingly
cough up the $100 bucks for an Olimex ICD2, because the AVR language
and architecture looks like an ordeal to learn. (Topic for another
thread).

> What I'd like to see fixed, is STUDIO!
> Some days, I have no problems at all. Other days, it's unusable.
> Feels like something un-initialized somewhere..

Care to describe the problems in more detail? I loaded it just to
compare it with MPLab and spent 10 minutes so far glancing at it, and
it looks like a higher-quality IDE from the graphics in the help-files
anyways.

Scott

>
>It sounded to me like it was free. Probably because they came out with
>an mkII version that handles more of their chips.

It's not free, at least not according to arrow or digikey.

The MkII is interesting.  

What I'd like to see fixed, is STUDIO!
Some days, I have no problems at all. Other days, it's unusable.
Feels like something un-initialized somewhere..

Doesn't Olemex already sell the clone, in a nice package for $40 dollars or
so?

http://www.olimex.com/dev/avr-jtag.html

More information:

http://www.egnite.de/pipermail/en-nut-discussion/2003-December/001643.html

-----Original Message-----
From: David VanHorn

>
>That still makes it $200, right?  I have developed a "clone" of the
>JTAG-ICE which I would like to sell in the $40 to $50 range. It takes
>its power from the target system, 3 to 5.5 V, and cuts some other
>corners to keep the cost down, but it runs the code loaded from AVR
>Studio and seems to work just fine. Could I get a reading of whether
>people are going to want this or not?

Sure.
At that price, it's not worth my time to roll my own.

The raw component cost though, is low enough that I could see someone
designing it right into a system, with the intent of only populating it in
the prototyping stages.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Barello" <yahoo@b...> wrote:

> Doesn't Olemex already sell
> the clone, in a nice package
> for $40 dollars or so?

Well, it depends what you mean by "nice". Have you read the Olimex 
document describing how to load the ICE software from AVR Studio?  It 
took me a couple of hours.  Also, the verification step fails.  You 
can load up my version in less than a minute and it verifies 
properly. The Olimex always reads the target voltage as 5.0 volts; my 
version actually measures it. Next, and this may be good or bad 
depending on your needs, my version is a tiny board that perches on 
the JTAG connector and needs no desk space. A cable runs directly to 
the DB9 that plugs into the PC. Finally, my version uses proper EMI 
design practices including an almost-complete ground plane and high 
quality isolation from the target power supply so that noise from the 
RS232 driver cannot get back to you. The Olimex VCC is directly 
connected to your target, has only one ceramic decoupling capacitor 
and makes no attempt at decent PCB design.

I think the problems I have solved here also justify my price over 
the roll-your-own approach based on stuff published on the Web.

Regarding embedding the JTAG-ICE in the product, I don't know why you 
would spend even the time to place and route the parts let alone bear 
the cost of the extra PCB area for the life of the product.  It may 
make sense to some, but I would think most commercial users would be 
happier with a separate, pre-tested device.

Thanks to everyone for the discussion.

Graham.

----- Original Message ----- 

From: "Graham Davies" <YahooGroups@ecrostech.com>
To: <AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, June 17, 2004 8:38 PM
Subject: [AVR-Chat] Olimex, roll-your own (was ... JTAG-ICE ...)


> --- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Larry Barello" <yahoo@b...> wrote:
> 
> > Doesn't Olemex already sell
> > the clone, in a nice package
> > for $40 dollars or so?
> 
> Well, it depends what you mean by "nice". Have you read the Olimex 
> document describing how to load the ICE software from AVR Studio?  It 
> took me a couple of hours.  Also, the verification step fails.  You 
> can load up my version in less than a minute and it verifies 
> properly. 

<snip>

    My Olimex JTAG updated in a minute without that procedure ??? Bought
in May.

Cosmin

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Cosmin Buhu" <lists@b...> wrote:

> My Olimex JTAG updated in a minute
> without that procedure ??? Bought
> in May.

Cosmin,

Thanks for this information.

What do you mean when you say "updated"? The Olimex document I was 
referring to is about how to get the software loaded into the JTAG-
ICE in the first place from AVR Studio (using AVR prog).  You have to 
make an adapter cable from the JTAG socket to an ISP device such as 
the STK500.  This includes opening the case to get at the reset 
signal. Then, you have to use the ISP to flip the boot fuse. Then you 
disconnect the ISP, connect AVR Studio to the JTAG-ICE serial port, 
power up and use AVR prog. After loading the software, verification 
fails (the documentation says that this is OK, but I'd rather see 
verification happen). Then you have to go back to the ISP connection 
and clear out the boot fuse. Then you break down your adapter cabling 
and put the unit back together.

My JTAG-ICE clone has a pad that you short to ground to start the 
boot loader. You short this (with a paper-clip, for example) and 
power up. Then you use AVR prog. Verification works. Then you power 
down and up again and you're ready to roll.

What I've got so far is that one person here thinks my JTAG-ICE is a 
decent product but everyone else is happy with the Atmel, Olimex or 
roll-your-own options. This is good input and I will initially make 
only a small number, not expecting to sell that many after all.

Graham.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Cosmin Buhu" <lists@b...> wrote:

> Look what can be read on Olimex site:
> " AVR-JTAG firmware upgrade for the
> very first lot of AVR-JTAG (no -L
> suffix), all JTAGs shipped after
> 01.01.2004 are with fixed bootloader
> and will upgrade automatically via
> AVR-STUDIO "

Ok, thanks Cosmin. That means although I purchased it recently (from 
SparkFun) it was an old one.  It did not have the L suffix MCU, 
though it worked OK at 3.3V.  So, strike one advantage of my clone 
over the Olimex. That leaves size, no desk space, measuring target 
voltage and good EMI design.

--- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Paul Curtis" <plc@r...> wrote:

> You might come a cropper with Atmel ...
> I think they're wanting to protect their IP
> Do you have Atmel's permission ...

No, I don't have Atmel's permission, but I can't quite see what IP 
I'm stealing. My hardware design is adapted from information on the 
Web and in Atmel's publications. My bootloader is adapted from an 
Atmel application note and conforms to a published protocol. I looked 
for but did not find any language prohibiting running software 
delivered as part of AVR Studio on non-Atmel hardware.  In fact, the 
license for AVR Studio allows re-distribution.  Also, why would Atmel 
care where people get JTAG-ICE's from? They make tools because they 
couldn't sell chips if they didn't exist but I doubt that it's part 
of their profit model.

Graham.

----- Original Message -----

From: "Graham Davies" <YahooGroups@ecrostech.com>
To: <AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2004 4:56 PM
Subject: [AVR-Chat] Re: Olimex, roll-your own (was ... JTAG-ICE ...)


> --- In AVR-Chat@yahoogroups.com, "Cosmin Buhu" <lists@b...> wrote:
>
> > My Olimex JTAG updated in a minute
> > without that procedure ??? Bought
> > in May.
>
> Cosmin,
>
> Thanks for this information.
>
<snip>

> My JTAG-ICE clone has a pad that you short to ground to start the
> boot loader. You short this (with a paper-clip, for example) and
> power up. Then you use AVR prog. Verification works. Then you power
> down and up again and you're ready to roll.
>
> What I've got so far is that one person here thinks my JTAG-ICE is a
> decent product but everyone else is happy with the Atmel, Olimex or
> roll-your-own options. This is good input and I will initially make
> only a small number, not expecting to sell that many after all.
>
> Graham.
>

    Hi Graham,

    I read that procedure and indeed I was afraid of it. First time AVR
Studio
claimed my adapter has an old firmware that needs to be updated, offered to
do the update, said no and this was all. Second time I assumed the risk and
said
yes to the update offer, which worked well, as I was able to use the adapter
after
that. Without that procedure. Or I am speaking wrong (but the JTAG is
working)?
    But I agree that only one low cost JTAG-ICE is less than enough, the
world
is big and you'll find the market for another one for sure.
    Look what can be read on Olimex site:
" AVR-JTAG firmware upgrade for the very first lot of AVR-JTAG (no -L
suffix),
all JTAGs shipped after 01.01.2004 are with fixed bootloader and will
upgrade
automatically via AVR-STUDIO "
    This quote appeared on site after I bought the adapter and upgrade it
:). In fact
now I am seeing it first time.

Cosmin