A Tale Of Woe
So i got this brain wave that it would be nice to use bare IC’s in my projects rather than Uno or Nano board supported on headers. It all seems rather simple don’t it. Buy some IC’s with the bootloader already installed, drop them into your socketed Uno board with its on board AVR programmer and Bobs the uncle who touches you inappropriately at family gatherings.
But Oh No No No No, things cannot be that simple can they. Firstly, ebay is a minefield and while you are probably getting top quality IC’s and not chinesium grade floor sweepings, the term with bootloader can be somewhat vague. Yes the IC will take a bootloader, yes the IC may or may not come with a bootloader, but what bootloader is anyone’s guess.
So armed with what look like a pile of bricks and armed with your google foo, you start to look for answers on the world wide interwebs because the pixies are not going where they are meant to or doing what you want. And here armed with your vague error codes from the arduino compiler you find 100’s of people who have no idea how to fix the problem let alone what the actual case of the problem is telling you all sorts of bullshit. From the IC is bricked and cannot be fixed, from edit this file, edit that file, use a capacitor, use this method of wiring, that method of wiring, this programmer, that programmer.
Well I tried them all and guess what, none of these bullshit explanations made any fucking difference to shit. It all comes down to the stupid who is connecting things together. After trying 6 or so different ways of burning a bootloader i finally got one of the 4 different programmers to actually work, it sent the bootloader to my so called bricked IC’s like a pro and then went on to program some software on the IC as well and made an LED blink.
Oh and don’t ask me how i got it working, i really do not know, this programmer did not work the first 3 times i tried it and today for god knows what reason it worked. Thats arduino for you. I giant pain in the arse when things do not want to happen and a joy to behold when things go well. Your Mileage May Vary.
