Hi, Does anyone know how to set up the AVRISP programmer. I think I have all the connections right, and the light shows green, but I can't connect to the chip when using with AVR Studio4.

The only resistor I have is a 10k pull-up on the reset line, are there others I should be using?

I'm using Window's Vista.

Thanks,

-CJS

Speaking of which,

there's one guy on eBay selling AVRISP mkII kits. PCB, IC and components, solder yourself. Search "AVRISP mkII" and sort by price, lowest first. Price+shipping is $10 in USA. I took the plunge.

I got the kit, soldered it and, guess what, it works:

parts in the kit

assembled

It has one USB B connector, 10-pin of 6-pin interface to the MCU, can power your circuit (no need for a voltage regulator nor battery), frees the PB0 pin since this programmer resets the MCU for you, programming is much faster, and you don't have to plug in and out anything — just leave it attached while doing your usual write/compile/upload/test cycles.

Sold by one mengjins2zn8 on eBay. Item plus shipping to continental USA costs $10.

Additional heads-up for Linux users: udev will not allow anyone except root to access the device when it's plugged in; to go around this, create a file in /etc/udev/rules.d/99-avrisp.rules (or similar):

# This file establishes user-friendly symlinks to devices according to
# Ubuntu policy.  See udev(7) for syntax.
#
# The names of the actual devices themselves must not be set here, but
# in 20-names.rules; the permissions and ownership of those devices
# should be set in 40-permissions.rules.

SYSFS{idVendor}=="03eb", SYSFS{idProduct}=="2104", GROUP="devel", MODE="0660"

This creates an udev rule that changes the ownership and permissions of the device. (devel is a group on my Linux box; you may want to create your own, say "avrdev", or simply "users").

The AVRISP MkII requires the target be self-powered before it can be connected to.

I too got the AVR USBasp kit from ebay for $10. It works wonderfully with XP and Vista. Full support of AVD Dude and AVR Studio. The programmer can supply 5V or 3.6V to the target board.

-Raja

I forgot to mention that the AVR mkII kit did not work on Vista and so I had to use the same hardware but with revised firmware to get t to work as USBasp.

-Raja

Wayward, can you provide a part list on this, please? I'm trying to understand why he built it the way he did, and want to be able to look up the specific datasheets for the diodes, transistor, etc.

BobaMosfet : I have the same (or similar) kit to wayward. A schematic etc can be found HERE

There is a way to make one of these (very similar) without the need for the extra components, but whilst I know it works - it's a little above my head!

The link above is a really nice kit though!

mcai8sh4: Thank you very much. Seeing a clear schematic answered my questions.

I grabbed the Atmel branded AVRISP MKII basically because I was ordering a bunch of LEDs and stuff from digi-key anyhow. Does anyone know if you need to supply power to the MCU to use the programmer? on the programmer's heder it has VCC and GND pins, I thought they were to power the target MCU but is that actually to power the programmer?

Sorry, I just read a few posts up and someone already answered my question!