SparkFun Forums

[Ex-JTAG owner]

My Olimex JTAG programmer seems to have given up the ghost--whereas it used to work correctly, now the LED doesn't even come on when I wire it up to power and ground.

I assume it's dead.

Two questions:

1. What could I have done to kill it?
2. Are the lower-cost programmers (the non-debugger ones) more durable, and are they compatible with AVR Studio?

[OLIMEX]

re question 1.
You can damage you JTAG the usual way you can damage any microcontroller. In AVR-JTAG there is AVR microcontroller if you burn one of the ports or apply reverse voltage on it it will be damaged.

re question 2.
the serial port and parallel port programmers are not more durable, the only difference is that if you do something wrong will destroy your PC RS232 or parallel port and no need to change the programmer but the PC
and they are not STK500/AVRISP software compatible, you can use PonyProg or AVRdude

Best regards
Tsvetan

[Ex-JTAG owner]

Another AVR-JTAG it is, then.

Thanks for the quick response!