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I just picked up a pair of Arduino Mini Pro 5v clone boards (Inland, sold at Microcenter, currently $4 USD) and I wanted to use my Uno as an ISP like I've done with ATmega328 and ATtiny85 chips before. I've programmed the Uno with the instructions at the ArduinoISP tutorial page and I've connected up the Uno to the Mini Pro using the instructions at this page. I cannot get the Arduino IDE or avrdude from the command line to successfully program these boards no matter what I try. Except that I can use the Arduino IDE to burn a new bootloader to the Mini Pro.

I've connected up the status LEDs as well (pins 7, 8 and 9), and I can see that the programmer has an error condition (pin 8) when I attempt to program anything besides the bootloader.

Here is my avrdude command line where I tried to set the fuses on the Mini Pro:

avrdude -P /dev/tty.usbmodema0121 -b 57600 -c avrisp -p atmega328p -U lfuse:w:0xff:m -U hfuse:w:0xdb:m -U efuse:w:0xfd:m

I get the following back from avrdude:

avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 2 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 3 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 4 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 5 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 6 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 7 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 8 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 9 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 10 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x1c

avrdude done.  Thank you.

I've not had any problems with using pretty much this exact same setup, but with a ATmega328 or ATtiny85 chip on a breadboard with avrdude in the past, so I'm at a loss as to what is happening here.

I've also taken a look at the ArduinoISP code, and I'm not really sure what the resp=0x1c is. I don't see a 0x1c value defined in the STK Definitions section of the code, so I'm not sure what might be causing this.

Any pointers here would be appreciated. And yes, I do know that I can use the Uno board with the ATmega328 chip pulled to use as a programmer as well. But I want to be able to overwrite the bootloader area with my own code like I can with a regular ATmega328 chip.

Thanks!

1 Answer 1

7

After poking around for a bit more, it turns out my problem was the baud rate. I could make it work by setting it to 19200, just a little slower. Alternatively, you can modify the ArduinoISP sketch to enable higher baud rates. I used this post to enable 115200 baud and I was able to successfully use avrdude at the higher rates.

Not sure how I missed this before, but it's an easy to solve at least.

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