Sunday, August 3, 2014

Minima - Good Progress

After a long late night working with Jeff - KO7M,  trying to fix my Minima Controller board, I finally gave up and went to bed.

About two hours of trying to sleep it dawned on me what was wrong, I got up and fixed the problem within a few minutes - Progress.

The initial problem was I had inadvertently ordered and installed the wrong Atmega328 part. The part that I installed is the "Atmega328-MU" and the desired part is the "Atmega328P-MU", the internal ID's were different, which confused me,  the Arduino IDE, and Avrdude. After modifying a few files, all worked as expected. I set "fuses", downloaded the bootloader, and downloaded the Minima Sketch. All is well.

The "P" in the product number indicate a "picopower" device, which is what all of the Minima builders are using. Actually, the builders are using the "Atmega328P-PU", the "P" in  "-PU" designates a Dual-Inline-Plastic package. Because I am building my Minima with very small parts, I am using the "-MU" package.

To avoid having a special configuration for my Minima build, I plan on ordering the correct "-MU" part.

Thanks to all those that have provided Comments, e-mails, and Assistance with this problem, a special thanks goes to Jeff for staying up very late at night on a Chat window.

Note: This morning, I also recovered my original damaged Minima Controller board, using the same strategy. Now I have two !!



UPDATE: Aug 3, 2014 22:26

For future reference, I used the following to "jump start" my new raw Atmega328-MU:
  • I changed the ID for the m328p to "m328" in the "/etc/avrdude.conf" file
  • avrdude -F -b 19200 -c usbtiny -p m328 -v -e -U efuse:w:0x05:m -U hfuse:w:0xDE:m -U lfuse:w:0xFF:m
  • See: http://www.codingwithcody.com/2011/04/arduino-default-fuse-settings/
  • Used Arduino IDE to download the UNO bootloader
  • Changed the ID for the m328 in the "avrdude.conf" file, back to the original
  • Used the Arduion IDE to download a Sketch
  • Note: Arduino IDE does not use /etc/avrdude.conf, it uses its own conf file.
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