My experience with Olimex AVR-USB-JTAG

Development Boards MicroMod
1

I just tried out my AVRICE compatible USB programmer from Olimex. Here is my experience, hopefully it can be useful to others who are struggeling with this product or planning to buy. Unless someone can help me to fix my problem I will just send the programmer back to them.

The only document that is provided for this programmer is a 1-page feature description. Besides telling where to download the FTDI drivers the document doesn’t say anything of particular interest for beginners.

  • How to interpret the red LED is not mentioned anywhere. It lights up when I connect programmer to target board. It blinks somewhat when I tell AVRStudio to search for the programmer.

  • The documentation does not mention how the provided cable shall be connected to target’s JTAG connector. I assumed that the red wire shall be connected to pin #1 on my MT-128 board, and that worked.

  • Olimex does not explain that the Upgrade process of the programmer depends on the program “AVRProg” from Atmel, running inside Studio, and that this program can only use COM1-4.

After installing my programmer and forcing it to COM4 I connected my target board and selected “Connect” in AVRStudio.

As expected Studio said a firmvare upgrade was needed. I pressed Ok and “AVRProg” was started with the “Upgrade.btn” file allready selected.

I pressed “Program” and AVRProg did following:

  • First AVR Prog did a chip erase (not instructed by me)

  • Then AVR Prog flashed for aproximately 2 minutes. This made me suspicious, why so slow.

  • After programming completed AVRProg started “verify” and the immidiately following error message was given:

Address: 0x0000, Expected: 0x940c, Received: 0xffff

From this I conclude that my programmer was erased but not upgraded and that the firmware-flash in the programmer is now blank.

I am now no longer able to detect the programmer from AVRStudio. Did the erase sequence also erase the bootloader on my AVR-USB-JTAG???

Is my programmer now rendered useless???

After looking around on Olimex’ website they say that because of a bug in AVR Studio the programmer must be connected to COM1-2. Is this the reason why my upgrade failed??

BTW, my target board MT-128 was running with separate power supply. But I guess that is irrelevant for upgrade process of AVR-USB-JTAG board.

I have been very satisfied with mye other Olimex products. But this was a very disapointing and time consuming first meeting with AVR-USB-JTAG, which is now DEAD it seems :frowning:

Any help greatly appreciated.

2

Ok, I solved my problem, but don’t ask me why.

I removed all other serial USB devices, mouse, etc and moved the AVR-USB programmer to COM2. Then I rebooted, ran AVR Studio and started AVR Prog.

AVR Prog completed programming but still failed during verification. But I think the message about failed verify is bogus, because now I can connect to AVR-USB and program my MT128 board.

Flashing the M128 was incredibly fast. I just stepped through my first program doing some UART stuff. Wooow, this is powerful stuff. Suddenly my embedded development got eyes!!

erik