Mega 2560 Firmware Upgrade

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi, Guys,

I’m new to the forum and totally new to Arduino. I was on a website yesterday, and read an article about checking to see if my Mega 2560 needed a firmware upgrade. From what it said, most boards that were shipped before I think it was July, need the upgrade. I did what it said to check and see if I needed one, and from what I found out, it needs the upgrade. That website had me go to the Atmel website and download a program there, which I did. Then I needed to go to another site, Github to download a program that would let me actually use the Atmel program to do the upgrade. From what I gather, Github uses the Atmel program to do it. I just don’t have a clue as to how to go about doing it. Like I said, I’m totally new to all this stuff. Can someone explain to me what to do and how to do it? Thanks, Lew

2

perhaps you are talking about installing a newer version of the Arduino bootloader into the special area of the flash memory.

Perhaps the newer version corrects serious bugs and that’s the rationale for changing? If not, just use what came with it!

To install a new bootloader, you need an in-system-programmer (ISP) hardware device to write the new bootstrap. Or a friend who has one. Or mail it to someone.

In any event, the place for proper guidance on that is not here - but on the Arduino forums or on avrfreaks.net forum.

Newbie… should start with an Arduino with 32KB or so. The 2560’s AVR CPU has to do special things, and so does your code, if your code is more than 60KB or so. Too hard for a beginner. But the 2560 is OK for the smaller programs.