[avrdude-dev] Problems with stk500hvsp and some attiny45

[Till Harbaum / Lists]

Hi,

i just encountered a strange problem with avrdude under linux, 
the stk500 in hvsp mode and the attiny45

I once programmed one of those chips using this call:

avrdude -P/dev/ttyS0 -c stk500hvsp -p attiny45 -U lfuse:w:0xdf:m -U 
flash:w:firmware.hex -U hfuse:w:0x5f:m

which just worked fine. Now i just tried to program three other chips. Two
of them don't work at all, one of them only works sometimes. The error
i get in 99% of the cases is a signature of 0x000000 being reported.

I was first expecting some problem with the power supply, the wiring or 
whatever. But then i started vmware and used avr studio and guess what? I 
could easily program all three chips. I did not touch anything besides 
changing the programming software.

I really don't have a clue what's going on there. Especially since not all
chips are affected to the same extent. I was even able to successfully 
program one of the three sometimes. But the remaining two always
return 0x000000 as their signature. I played a little but with the fuses in 
avr studio which at some point caused avrdude to reliably report a wrong 
signature  != 0.

I see this with avrdude 5.2 and 5.3.1 under linux.

Regards,
  Till