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Help! ATMEL's firmware upgrade KILLED my STK500 programmer!

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DigiTan

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My long list of greivances against ATMEL seems to be growing. This time it involves my STK500 target board and the v2.00 firmware upgrade.

I upgraded to AVR Studio 4.11 "build 401" from version 4, build 171 this month. I had a lot of unexplained problems in the new IDE, but nothing critical. Immidiately though, AVR Studio started throwing a bunch of annoying messages at me saying my STK500 contained outdated v1.0A firmware and needed to be upgraded to v2.00. After a few weeks of annoying pop-up messages, I gave in and upgraded. This was an hour ago.

I followed all the upgrade instructions exactly, and watched AVR Studio upgrade and verify the firmware with an "upgrade successful" message at the end. Now whenever I try to program one of my ATTiny12's, I get this dialog...

Reading FLASH input file.. OK
Setting mode and device parameters.. OK!
Entering programming mode.. OK!
Erasing device.. OK!
Programming FLASH .. FAILED!
Leaving programming mode.. OK!

..."Programming Flash Failed?!!" What the hell is going on here?

I tried resetting the computer, resetting the STK, reading the FLASH, and nothing works anymore. I've had the old firmware for 2 years and it's never failed me. Now I can't do anything! My ATtiny worked as recently as yesterday and has less than 100 flash writes to its credit.

It appears ATMEL is disguising viruses as firmware upgrades now. What did these jerks do to my AVR programer? And how can I clean up after them?
 
Let me guess, you are running this on XP and you are trying to use a serial port as well! :lol: In your dreams.

AND you are using software written by SOMEONE ELSE and you don't even have a faintest clue what is being sent down to the programmer, and you take the screen information as if it was correct.

This is typical to alot of people who want to program the chips the "easy" (or should I say the "not-so-easy") way.

As for me, the beginning may be hard, BUT it does pay off in the end. Although $9 went down the toilet for 3 toasted uC's, the remaining chip lasts a while, because I revised my designs. I am making and improving my own uC programmer and will be using it for a long time. Next, I will go down low-level style and write directly to the parallel port registers. And ya know what? If I wanted to, I could actually program the entire chip using just a basic old '286 computer! :D

As for your problem, try different software, If that doesn't work, then assume the software has lied, and check the chip. If the chip isn't right, then I'm afraid you will have to follow my ways or buy yourself a new programmer.
 
Well, not quite. I'm running windows ME, I'm not some kind of AVR newb (I've been using STK for 2 years), and it's an official "upgrade" included within AVR Studio v4.11.401 itself. The board is an official STK500, which I desparately need because it can program, verify, read, fuse & lock-bit virtually any AVR device (plus some of their 8051 devices). It also cost $90 and I prefer to restore it rather than buy one anew.

The part that frustraits me is AVR Studio claimed I would have errors only if I didn't upgrade. On top of that, there's no indication of what caused the Flash error, and the IDE never offered the original firmware back once the problem appeared. My best bet might be to find the original firmware file, but mostly everybody got rid of theirs when they upgraded to v4.11 like I did. :x
 
I think Windows ME is the worst.

Why not make the assumption that the messages on the screen are nothing but lies. In other words, test the uC to see that it works.

And by the way, if any chip in your programmer is hot, your programmer is screwed. If the uC is hot when inserted into the programmer, then the uC is screwed, and you should try a fresh new one.
 
mstechca said:
I will go down low-level style and write directly to the parallel port registers. And ya know what? If I wanted to, I could actually program the entire chip using just a basic old '286 computer! :D

And I guess you will use a keyboard to write code on that 286?...

Pffft. Real men write directly on the hard disk cylinders using just a small handheld magnet. You can never trust the middlemen, never.

:roll: :p :lol:
 
Joel Rainville, you drive an excellent point.

mstechca, I do not care about any macho "lone wolf" methods or taking the hardest routes possible. All I want is my programmer back.

The board is communicating.
The chip is still running my last successful instructions.
The problem is the firmware.
 
Either go to the company and make a big complaint, or look for an older version and ignore the upgrades.
 
Okay, I found the solution. Basically I found someone at AVR Freaks who managed to backup his firmware .ebn file after his upgrade failed like mine did. Once I had that, I could downgrade my firmware manually through AVR Studio. It's not the same version I had originally, but it at least works.

Since ATMEL offered me no help on this one, I wrote a short guide on my webpage describing how I fixed mine in more detail. And if it's not illegal, I'm going to distribute the old firmware. So hopefully others can avoid this bugged firmware version.
 
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