After looking over a lot of cool projects based on the ATMEL family of microcontroller, I just bought a bunch of ATMGAG8-16PI's. I bought these because I was under the impression these where very easy to play with:
- On chip RC oscillator, no need for a crystal for simple stuff
- Lots of I/O pins with decent source and sink capacity - can light up LED's directly
- A/D converter (might be fun to play with)
- No hardware programmer required - a few resistors hooked up to a PC's printer port.
- Lots of free tools - assemblers, compilers, libraries etc.
Ok, so I have a bunch of the chips and I have downloaded and built up the Linux AVR tools, the gcc cross compiler etc. I have also downloaded the AVR Studio from ATMEL.
Now, here is the thing, it seems that the Linux AVR tools will support the really simple "few resistor" type of programmer, whatever that is called. I am not sure if the AVR Studio or any windows 2000/XP software will support the same few resistor type programmer. I have been looking around and I have found:
A few of the few simple resistors and printer port based programmers. The gotcha is just about all of them use different pins on the printer port! They all use the same pins on the chip. Is there not a standard for this? How do you know what will work with what?
A few that look like the above but that terminate in a dedicated programming connection on the board with the micro. (JTAG?)
A few of them that hang off the printer port and use different amounts of old TTL logic between the printer port and the mico.
A few of the above that go into the dedicated connection on the board with the micro.
Are these guys cross compatible with the same programming software? Being a big fan of making my own life easy, why would you add more gunk between the two pieces?
Then there is the breed that hangs off the serial port on a PC.
Then there are the little dedicated "programmer" boards with the ZIF sockets and what seems to be a lot more silicon in the programmer itself.
So, can some kind soul tell me what the really cheep and easy "resistors and the printer port" type programmer is called and point me at some windows software that supports it (my linux box is a desktop in another room, and I would like to be able to program these from my notebook in the shop. The notebook runs XP and is unlikely to change)
Also, if you can elaborate on what makes the different types of these programmers "better" on "worse" then the other types. If I catch the bug I suspect I will upgrade if the other types do something neat or that can not be done with the Q&D ones.
Thanks in advance!
--Matthew
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