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

[Bob Chiodini]

Robert L Cochran wrote:
> 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
>
Bob,

I did some poking on the bdmicro website and there is a later verion of 
avrdude.

http://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/avrdude/

You could try talking to the programmer via mincom.  Maybe there is a 
baud rate or handshake issue.

Bob...