Hi Richard, On 30/09/12 12:04, Richard Cavell wrote: > Hi, all. > > I'm in Ipswich, Queensland, Australia. I'm trying to learn AVR > Programming by starting here: > http://hackaday.com/2010/10/23/avr-programming-introduction/ > > […] > > I built myself a DAPA cable. Problem is, none of my computers has a > parallel port. I installed a 3rd party parallel port card (cheap > Chinese rubbish) into a PCI slot on my desktop, but it turns out the > driver is unsigned and probably doesn't work on Windows 7 anyway.
Ahh the joys of Microsoft dictating what you can and cannot install on your own hardware. Have you tried booting up a Linux LiveCD to see if it can drive the parallel port? You may also be able to expose the raw PCI device to a virtual machine guest running a compatible OS if dual-booting isn't convenient. > In order to follow this tutorial, I need a computer with a > motherboard-mounted parallel port that will run avrdude and reliably > program an AVR through it. Any ideas what kind of computer/operating > system would give me the most compatibility? I guess I could go through > ebay to buy an old computer, or find someone locally. I built my own "DASA"-style programmer using some general-purpose transistors that I find, works well on the old Toshiba TE2100 laptop I have (running Gentoo Linux). It does not work with a PL2303-based USB serial converter, but that's another story. The programmer I built involved 5 transistors; 4 BC547s and a BC557... I can post a schematic up if anyone is interested. RTS connects to a BC547 which drives nRESET and the base of the BC557. The BC557's emitter connects to the device's VCC, and the collector provides the pull-up voltage on the transistors driving SCK and MOSI; thus when nRESET is logic high, the PNP transistor is turned off, and so as long as the other transistors are off, SCK/MOSI effectively go high-impedance, so you can leave it plugged into a circuit. The buffering also allows it to work at almost any voltage. I've been programming an ATMega8L with it running at 3V. Jaycar sell all the bits needed. A compatible system with the above programmer should be fairly easy to come by, just look in any pawn shop ... I know Ipswich have a few. :-) Regards, -- Stuart Longland (aka Redhatter, VK4MSL) .'''. Gentoo Linux/MIPS Cobalt and Docs Developer '.'` : . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .'.' http://dev.gentoo.org/~redhatter :.' I haven't lost my mind... ...it's backed up on a tape somewhere. _______________________________________________ AVR-chat mailing list [email protected] https://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/avr-chat
