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Support Forum » What is the proper way to debug chip programming errors?
February 08, 2012 by maurin |
Along with many others on the forum, I'm having "butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding" errors. So far I've found at least four posts that are relevant to these types of problems.
I'm running OSX 10.5.8, using AVRMacPack from the downloads page. Most of the time I'm getting an error on the "reading on-chip data" step after the write.
avrdude: butterfly_recv(): programmer is not responding make: *** [initialload-upload] Error 1 After this, the chip is left in some unrecoverable state. So I just unplug the battery, and USB cable, the plug everything back in. On average, I'm getting about 10% success. All other times I get some kind of error. So far, I have tried:
I have not had two consecutive successful writes. Tonight, I'll try booting into Windows, to see if that makes any difference with the drivers. Mainly the frustration is not knowing how to see where the problem is coming from. I feel like I'm just randomly trying things, hoping something will work. Do you guys have any suggestions for things that I can directly measure and check? I have a good multimeter and an old scope available, if that will help. I'll include pictures of my board tonight. |
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February 08, 2012 by maurin |
Here's the image for the bread board. |
February 09, 2012 by maurin |
Alright, so I booted my computer into Windows XP. Programming the chip works perfectly. This was very telling. I'm using the same computer, the same USB port, the same USB cable, the same NerdKit breadboard. The only thing that changed was the OS on the computer. If I boot my Mac into OSX (64-bit v10.5.8), I get the intermittent problems described earlier. If I boot the same machine into Windows XP (32bit), I can program the chip all day long. For all these tests, I'm using the software and drivers from the download page. AVRMacPack for OSX, and WinAVR package and PL2303 drivers for Windows. In one of the posts, there was talk of a issue with the mac prolific drivers. Seems like there is something to this. On OSX, I observe the failure as follows. After a failed write, I unplug the battery to reset the chip. That does not work. In one of the posts, Ralphxyz mentioned there being a voltage on the power rails. I measured, and indeed found 2.36V. As mentioned in that post, it seems that keeps the Atmel chip in an indeterminate state, and it will not program. The solution was to unplug the USB cable form the computer, and try again. But with 10% success on write, it is hit or miss on OSX. For now I'll do my programming on the windows side. I'll try adding the switch to the yellow wire, and report. |
February 11, 2012 by Ralphxyz |
Hi maurin, I "had" similar problems to what you are describing. Eventually I got everything working but never could say what actually made the correction. You also might add a switch to ground on pin 1 with a 1k resistor to the Vcc (+) rail! There is an ongoing thread with Humberto and Rick helping out on doing this! This works on my Mac MINI (OS X 10.6.8) Ralph |
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