SparkFun Forums

[michael.everett]

Hey there,

Basically I have the setup from lecture #2 on the site, except I opted for the serial version of the programmer because I have no parallel or serial port on my computer and figured a usb to serial cable would be the best hope.

Well everything works, and I can program the ATMega168, however the problem is the speed at which it reads/writes a hex file from/to the flash memory. Currently I'm clocking in at about 4 bytes / second. That just seems ridiculously slow.

The USB to serial cable I have is here: http://www.pimfg.net/product_detail.asp ... part=UN8BE

Does anyone have any ideas? I'd like to exhaust my options before I have to invest in another more expensive programmer. But 4 bytes per second is unbearably slow for development.

Thanks,
-Mike

I did a pretty extensive search and pretty much all that I could find that was even slightly related was this link (but not the same programmer): http://www.evilmadscientist.com/article ... rmac/print

[johnsmith123]

why don't you try using it on a PC without the USB to serial connection first.
I am sure you can find someone with a serial port.

Digi-Key has the ATAVRISP2-ND for under $40.

This one works on a usb port.

[michael.everett]

Thanks for replying. Honestly I didn't really do any research about a serial to USB cable and if it would work with the Olimex programmer, I just assumed there was a good chance it would, and it was a cheap solution. Believe it or not I don't have immediately easy access to a PC with a serial port (seems wrong I know...).

Ultimately I guess I'm lucky it actually worked (Olimex says it won't on further inspection), and at least it gave me something to play with while I learned initially. I've already ordered the AVRISP mkII from digikey. If I had not come to that conclusion on my own already you're response would have been very helpful, so thanks anyhow.

[johnsmith123]

Every program I have used with my USB to serial has ALWAYS had some kind of problem.

[powool]

I used a USB<->serial converter with the serial programmer and found it to be slow as well.

I replaced it with this: http://www.ladyada.net/make/usbtinyisp/index.html, which seems to be several orders of magnitude faster.

I use it to program my various olimex boards and am happy with it.