Where Is The AVRISP USB Programmer When I Plug It In?

[Robert L Cochran]

Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote:
>> I'm not sure what you mean here by 'USB to serial device with TTL level
>> outputs'. Yes, the programmer is plugged into a USB port on my FC5
>> machine at one end and an Atmel-based controller board on the other end.
>> I want to program an Atmel Atmega128 chip which is on the controller
>> board. It has a Maxim Max3222 chip on board. The board is intended to be
>> a robot controller.
>>
>>     
> What I have run into before is that what they are calling a
> programmer is actually a communication cable that talks to a serial
> port on the development board that is a ttl (0 to 5V - with 5V as
> logic 1) instead of RS-232 (+/- 3 to 35 volts - polarity indicates
> logic level.) The actual programming is done by the development
> board by firmware on the board. You are usually talking to a monitor
> program of some sort on the board or chip.
>
> In this case, it looks like the programmer is a bit more complicated
> then that. I did not find the pinouts for the ISP Programming
> Interface, so I am not sure how much the programmer really does...
>
> Mikkel
>   

Hi Mikkel,

This is the controller board I'm programming

http://www.bdmicro.com/mavric-iib/

and the manual for it is here

http://www.bdmicro.com/mavric-iib/mavric-iib.pdf

Page 15 of the manual has a circuit diagram showing the pinout of JP2, 
which is the ISP header.

The AVRISP programmer I am using is apparently an older model. I 
discovered it does work. To test it I ended up using a Windows XP 
computer. Now I'm hoping to get it to work on my FC5 computer.

The AVRISP I have here contains a CP2102 USB to UART Bridge Controller. 
When I plugged it in to the USB port on the test computer, Microsoft 
Windows came up with the "New Hardware Found" Message and waited for me 
to provide a driver file. The programmer came with a CD containing 
drivers, so I installed those. They seem to originate from 
http://www.silabs.com/ but I haven't investigated their web site closely 
yet.

A check of Device Manager showed that the CP2102 controller was on COM4.

Here is what I did next:

*Downloaded and installed AVRStudio4 from the Atmel website, plus the 
latest AVRStudio4 service pack.
*Downloaded and unzipped the 'hw' sample code from the bdmicro.com 
website which should flash the programmable LED which is on the 
controller board. The sample code has a precompiled hw.hex file I can use.
*Started AVRStudio4.
* Clicked the button to connect to the programmer.

At this point AVRStudio came up with a message saying it has detected 
the programmer, but it needed a firmware upgrade from firmware version 
2.07 to the most current version. I clicked OK to upgrade the firmware.

After cycling power to the programmer (by unplugging it from the USB 
cable and replugging it in) I was able to program the ATmega128 chip 
with the hw.hex file, and the board's programmable LED started blinking.

The programmer did come with a Linux driver..here is a portion of the 
README file:

CP210x Linux Driver v0.81b Release Notes
Copyright (C) 2004 Silicon Laboratories, Inc.
 
This release contains the following components:
 
* cardinal-redhat9-V0_81b.tar.gz
* Readme.txt (this file)
...


Do I need to compile and install this software? I'm afraid of breaking 
something.

I get the impression from the /var/log/messages output when I plug the 
programmer in to the USB port that this driver is already present in the 
2.6.18-1.2257.fc5 kernel, and ttyUSB0 is a serial port, isn't it? I'm 
still not sure how to get avrdude to speak to the programmer. Perhaps 
the firmware upgrade done to it by AVRStudio will help.

Bob