Given that avrdude always spits out some error messages, I think it’s useful to know which can be safely ignored. Its output is not always obvious when you’re new at this.
Very nice Hoop! I’m glad to see you updated it, this thread really was the key to flashing for me.
You only mention the pamona clip, but the cheap clip made the step to decide to flash way easier for me. For some change, I thought I could give it a shot.
My cheap clip still works good, I actually ordered another one as backup…
€2 SOIC8 clip
I know the pamona is supposed to be better and easier to connect with the coloured ribbon. But the cheap ones maybe deserve a place on your OP as well at 1/7th of the cost… Some people allso seem to have issues with the pamona, although probably less frequent.
It might encourage more people to try it.
The whole initial flash setup costed me about five bucks.
Nice you added info about the fuses as well. I allmost bricked my first AT85.
A screenshot of a succesful test might be nice. I think it is quite self explanatory, but I worked a bit with ms-dos back in the days… It might be nice to add that there is allways a fault message when entering the test command. I forgot the exact text, but I initially thought something was wrong. It is further down in the thread posted already I think…
Really (one of) the best how-to’s on BLF :+1:
Edit: I’m a slow poster, fixed it already posted about the avrdude error I see…
I’ll do a fresh run through of the guide sometime soon, following the instructions and seeing how it goes, and will add a couple more photo’s.
I wasn’t aware of that clip Dutchee. Looks like a worthy cheap alternative to the Pomona and I’ll link it. I still only want to show connection details when using the colored ribbon cables though since it is much easier to get working. The stock clip and cable that comes with the USBasp causes too many headaches.
Yeah, I think that’s a great idea. The colored ribbon makes it real clear how to wire everything.
Real cheapskates can always try to figure out how this translates to the free ribbon supplied with the USBasp programmer. But the colored ribbon is the way to go.
Dutcheee, that black clip looks like the standard clip to me, just without the ribbon cable pre-soldered to it. Do you know if the splittable ribbon ends fit on those posts? They seemed too close to me, but haven’t tried it (I don’t have a splittable ribbon yet)
I went with the standard black clip and grey ribbon. As you said, I wanted to be able to try out flashing a couple chips before diving all-in and going for the nicer (and more expensive) equipment. Now that they’ve proven useful, I may consider upgrading. You have to start somewhere! 
It’s still in the mail from China, but my guess is the same.
On my first clip the posts were too close as well. But that’s no problem, just bend 2 connectors down a little, and the colored ribbon connects just fine.
Edit: better picture
Added the cheap clip to the OP.
(Users should take note that it requires a small modification: bending the pins)
Yeah, I must admit… It was one hell of a mod :sunglasses:
Really appreciate you did this thread Hoop, may not have said it before, but Thanks!!
If I’ve never agreed with Tom on anything before I agree with him here. Thanks Hoop. Man of many talents.
Just thought I’d check back in in case anyone runs into this issue. I ordered a V2 programmer. It solved my problems flashing the qlite.
Top: bad
Bottom: great
That's so weird - I was assuming it's a v1, but maybe it's something else. I just went thru two eves of hell with getting USBASP downloading to work. The computer would not even recognize the USBASP, and the red light would not go on. Turns out it was a couple of solder bridges on the driver caused all that. I went to the back of the computer trying other USB ports, tried moving USB cables around, even ordered a USB extender cable and a USB hub, thinking it was something there, even power reset the computer a couple times, updated the USPASP drivers, etc.. Stupid me, left the driver board plugged in. I even disconnected the wires from the USBASP, then it worked fine, both dongles I have. Isolated it to the driver, and found 2 bad solder shorts - fixed them, and no more problems...
Weird that shorts on the driver board cause the USBASP to not even be recognized by the computer.
Driver programming - fun but also potentially extremely frustrating!
If you connect the clip upside down on the Attiny you get the same result. Red light on the USBasp won’t come on. I guess its some kind of safety…
If any of its data pins are grounded, it can’t send or receive any data on those pins. So it can’t even identify the chip.
I guess I'm so paranoid about the computer's USB ports, I kind of suspected that first, wasted a lot of time as a result. Well, I'll have an extender cable and hub coming by tomorrow, so that should help. I still don't have a working computer down in my office/shop, so it's frustrating going upstrairs/dnstairs to do the programming.
You don’t even need a short on the driver. I just put my clip the wrong way around on the MCU and the light on the USBASP wouldn’t even come on. I was scared it was blown for a few seconds there.
Tried to install Atmel Studio 7 on my windows 7 pc and it fails to install because of a lack of a certain windows update; an update which is not applicable to my PC according to Microsoft.
I grabbed version 6 of Atmel Studio and that installed fine. I got it from software.informer. (direct dl link)
So I’ve finally decided that learning to program drivers is too fun to miss out & that I should learn to do so. The issue is that I’ve only been running linux on my main computer for years (linux mint) & have no desire to dual boot or use any other OS. I haven’t yet used Wine to run Windows programs in linux yet but I have no doubt that it will do just fine for that purpose. HOWEVER I do not know it will allow me to use/install any windows drivers that I may need.
So my question (or what I asking for help is) -> do any blf members here that flash/program their drivers do so exclusively with solely a linux computer? & if so what is your setup please? Thanks in advance!
Be well,
AZ
ToyKeeper does use Linux, or some derivative, for all her firmware development. I don't know any details though, but she has done a lot of the drivers and driver baselines we all use.