Programming Chinese Arduinos

Question

I have an authentic Arduino UNO, but I didn't want to pay full price for a new one to build semi perminate projects, so I bought a few ATMEGA328P-PU chips off of AliExpress:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1pcs-lot-ATMEGA328P-PU-CHIP-ATMEGA328-Microcontroller-MCU-AVR-32K-20MHz-FLASH-DIP-28/32346944696.html

But when I try to use Arduino IDE to upload the sketch to the new chips, I get these errors:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00

It happens 10 times and quits.

It works fine when I put the original chip back in.

If anyone has any experience with this I'd be very grateful!

EDIT:

Trying the burn bootloader steps, and I'm getting a new error.

Steps I took:

I'm doing the 8MHz option, and so I downloaded the breadboard-1-6-x.zip file. (I'm using Arduino IDE 1.6.5 on Mac).

I uploaded the ArduinoISP example to my working chip, then wired it up to the breadboard as per the picture.

I switched the programmer to Arduino as ISP and set the board to ATMEGA328 on breadboard (8MHz clock)

I went to tools>burn bootloader, and got this error:

Arduino: 1.6.5 (Mac OS X), Board: "ATmega328 on a breadboard (8 MHz internal clock)"

/Users/andy/Desktop/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/tools/avr/bin/avrdude -C/Users/andy/Desktop/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf -v -patmega328p -cstk500v1 -P/dev/cu.usbmodem411 -b19200 -e -Ulock:w:0x3F:m -Uefuse:w:0x05:m -Uhfuse:w:0xDA:m -Ulfuse:w:0xE2:m

avrdude: Version 6.0.1, compiled on Apr 14 2015 at 16:30:25 Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/ Copyright (c) 2007-2009 Joerg Wunsch

     System wide configuration file is "/Users/andy/Desktop/Arduino.app/Contents/Java/hardware/tools/avr/etc/avrdude.conf"
     User configuration file is "/Users/andy/.avrduderc"
     User configuration file does not exist or is not a regular file, skipping

     Using Port                    : /dev/cu.usbmodem411
     Using Programmer              : stk500v1
     Overriding Baud Rate          : 19200 avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x15
     AVR Part                      : ATmega328P
     Chip Erase delay              : 9000 us
     PAGEL                         : PD7
     BS2                           : PC2
     RESET disposition             : dedicated
     RETRY pulse                   : SCK
     serial program mode           : yes
     parallel program mode         : yes
     Timeout                       : 200
     StabDelay                     : 100
     CmdexeDelay                   : 25
     SyncLoops                     : 32
     ByteDelay                     : 0
     PollIndex                     : 3
     PollValue                     : 0x53
     Memory Detail                 :

                              Block Poll               Page                       Polled
       Memory Type Mode Delay Size  Indx Paged  Size   Size #Pages MinW  MaxW   ReadBack
       ----------- ---- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ ----- ----- ---------
       eeprom        65    20     4    0 no       1024    4      0  3600  3600 0xff 0xff
       flash         65     6   128    0 yes     32768  128    256  4500  4500 0xff 0xff
       lfuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
       hfuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
       efuse          0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
       lock           0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0  4500  4500 0x00 0x00
       calibration    0     0     0    0 no          1    0      0     0     0 0x00 0x00
       signature      0     0     0    0 no          3    0      0     0     0 0x00 0x00

     Programmer Type : STK500
     Description     : Atmel STK500 Version 1.x firmware

avrdude: stk500_getparm(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x14

avrdude: stk500_getparm(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x02

avrdude: stk500_getparm(): (a) protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x10 Hardware Version: -1543397124 Firmware Version: 2165568.-1543397124 Topcard : STK502 Vtarget : 1.8 V Varef : 0.0 V Oscillator : Off SCK period : 0.1 us

avrdude: stk500_initialize(): (b) protocol error, expect=0x10, resp=0x01 avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1 Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override this check.

avrdude: stk500_disable(): protocol error, expect=0x14, resp=0x10

avrdude done. Thank you.

Problem uploading to board. See http://www.arduino.cc/en/Guide/Troubleshooting#upload for suggestions.

Making a little progress at least...

Solution:

I was using this layout:

Since that was failing I decided to try using the nano that I got at the same time, and after a lot of research I found this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=94KCYqS3--A

I jumpered the pins shown at the 1:30 mark to the ICSP port, and tried burning the bootloader twice per chip, and on the second try it worked! Don't know why it had to be tried twice.

I may go back to trying the breadboard method, just to see if it works if I try burning it twice.

Answer 1

It's because these are unprogrammed chips, meaning they haven't had a bootloader programmed into them yet. Here is a tutorial for using your Arduino board to program a bootloader into them (there are many such tutorials available).

It only needs to be done once per chip so it will be worth your while to program all of them, once you have set up to do one. This is a very economical way to build "home-brew-duinos".