RE: [avrdude-dev] RE: avrdude programming errors.

[Henk Visser]

Brain,

Thank you for your email.  Turns out that my STK500 development board was
bad!  After replacement everything is working!

-Henk


-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Dean [mailto:address@hidden
Sent: Thursday, April 08, 2004 7:13 PM
To: Henk Visser
Cc: address@hidden
Subject: Re: [avrdude-dev] RE: avrdude programming errors.


On Thu, Apr 08, 2004 at 05:03:57PM -0700, Henk Visser wrote:

> avrdude -p atmega128 -P com3 -c stk500 -U flash:w:test.hex
>
> avrdude: stk500_program_enable(): failed to enter programming mode
> avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
> Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
> this check.
>
>
> avrdude done. Thank you.

> What is AVRDUDE looking for when it gets an error like this?

I believe that at this point it has established communication with the
STK500 and issued the commands to enter programming mode, but that
failed for some reason that it cannot determine.

To see where it really is, add '-v -v -v -v' (no quotes) to your
command line to crank up the verbosity level to the point where it
will show the individual bytes of data transfered between your PC and
the STK500.  This might provide a little more insight.

In my experience, usually when something like this happens it is due
to a circuit problem.  Is this a board you made yourself?  Double
check that /RESET is changing when you start up AVRDUDE - you can use
something as simple as a voltmeter - you should see it blip from high
to low and back to high again.  It will probably be slow enough that
you will notice the change on a simple voltmeter.

If that is working, double check that you are getting some type of
signal on SCK, MOSI, and MISO in a similar fashion when you start
AVRDUDE.  Again, activity will be brief, but you should see something
on all three lines.

Chances are, one of those aren't working correctly - double check the
solder connections, make sure there are no bridges.

More unlikely, but possible, is that your chip does not have the fuses
set in the default state, and thus it cannot enter programming mode.
While I've never received chips this way, others have claimed they
have, and sometimes feeding an external clock signal into XTAL1 while
entering program mode does the trick.  If that works, reset your fuses
back to defaults, disconnect the external clock, and try again.  It
should work at that point.

-Brian