AVR Vanilla Board

[Arv Evans]

Eric & Hans

Looking at circuitry yesterday and today indicates that the simplest programming dongle may be one for the serial or parallel ports.  The serial version <http://www.olimex.com/dev/images/avr-pg1b-sch.gif> requires a transistor, 3 diodes, and 5 resistors, while the parallel one requires only 4 resistors <http://www.bsdhome.com/avrdude/>.  Doing any USB type programming dongle at this time seems beyond the objective of "keep it simple and stupid".  With that in mind, I think the vanilla board will include either serial or parallel programming components on-the-board to allow a straight through I/O cable to be used for programming.  I know that Hans has only parallel I/O on his laptop...should that be a criteria for selection of how the chips are in-circuit programmed?  Alternatively, the Vanilla Board could be built in either of two versions, supporting either serial or parallel programming capability.

I have not yet been able to determind if the AVR Studio programming software is capable of using the serial programming cable shown above, only that this is what is recommended for using the so-called "Pony Programmer" software package <http://www.lancos.com/prog.html>.

Arv
_._

[Hans Summers]

Negative, Arv

Actually I only have USB on my laptop. No serial, no parallel. Just USB. In the future, all computers will end up this way. The parallel port is an old and dying technology. But nevertheless, since a USB port isn't trivial for the homebrewer, it is probably still worth doing the parallel port programmer, particularly as USB->Parallel port adapters will probably be available for a while.

73 Hans