AVR Programmers

From RepRap
Revision as of 08:15, 31 October 2014 by Traumflug (talk | contribs) (Compatibility)
Jump to: navigation, search

Hopefully this will become a resource for people looking to buy a programmer for their RepRap electronics project. The impetus for the page was a recent issue I had with the USBTiny programmer trying to program the bootloader to a 1284P. I found out as many others have that USBTiny is not compatible with the larger memory space of the 1284P. So the initial part will be a compatibiity matrix.


Compatibility

This is a compatibility chart for various AVR programmers to aid people in finding a suitable programmer for their RepRap electronics project. Each programmer is followed by a column that indicates whether or not it is possible to program from within the Arduino software or whether the user would need to use some other burning software to load the bootloader with. The rest of the columns indicate compatibility with various chips used in RepRap electronics. It boils down to wether a programmer is capable of programming chips with only 64 kB of flash (16 bit address width) or also bigger ones (24 bit address width). A question mark indicates probable compatibility but not yet confirmed. If you have used a particular programmer to burn a particular AVR in the list please remove the "?" to show it has been confirmed.

Programmer Arduino software support Flash <= 64 kB Flash > 64 kB
USBTiny Y Y N
Pololu USB AVR Programmer  ? Y Y
AVR ISP MK II Y Y Y
USBasp Y Y Y
Arduino as programmer Y Y Y?
Parallel Programmer Y Y Y?

Note: if you happen to have a programmer for < 64 kB already, you can still program bigger chips with it, but only firmwares up to 64 kB in size and no bootloader.

See also