I’ve just brought an AVR ISP MKII programmers from atmel and I’d like to test It without having a prototype.

The idea is to use the stk500 as a support for the MCU and plug the programmer on the SPROG3 connector, but nothing good came out of it.

Looking around into the AVR Freaks forum I see different people post the same question, but the only reply they’ve got was from others asking “why?”.

• I want to test my programmer can be an answer!
• I want to program an MCU NOT SUPPORTED by my old stk500 firmware for example! (like the atmega164pa with STK500 v1).

I hate when people discuss about a question without giving any answer.

I have to remove ALL the caps from STK500 like VTARGET, AREF, RESET, XTAL1 and plug the ISP connector onto the right connector (since I’m using the SCKT3100A3 I plugged the ISP into the SPROG3 connector), then power on the stk500 with a brand new MCU atmega164pa (different MCU with different fuse settings maybe lead to other commplications).

Oh by the way, since I’m using the stk500 which is connected to the serial port, I’ve given my user the privilege to read/write the serial port, but with the ISP connected via USB, libusb need the privilege to access the USB device in order to program the MCU. Use “sudo” for a test and create an UDEV rules for normal day-to-day work.

For example to test the FUSE bit:

sudo avrdude -c avrispmkII -p atmega164p -P usb -t
avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.03s

avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e940a
avrdude> dump hfuse
>>> dump hfuse 
0000  99                                                |.               |

avrdude> dump lfuse
>>> dump lfuse 
0000  62                                                |b               |

avrdude> quit
>>> quit 

avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK

avrdude done.  Thank you.

Now I have to use :( the avr studio 4 under windows to upgrade my stk500 firmware to a v2.0a in order to work with the new MCU.