Electronic – AVRISP mkII not reading device signature

atmel-studioattinyavravrdude

I recently bought a dozen ATtiny85 MCUs and I was trying to test one simply by putting a blink program on it via the Arduino IDE with and AVRISP mkii (Arduino 1.0.5, Ubuntu 13.04). I kept getting an error suggesting that it wasn't wired correctly, but I've checked it multiple times (and it's powered externally at 4.8v). I even tested multiple ATtinys so it's very unlikely that they're all duds. When I switched to using my Arduino as ISP, it programmed fine. I tried using avrdude -c avrispmkii -p t85 -P usb -t to see if it was a problem with the Arduino IDE setup, but that gave me the same error. I set all the /etc/udev rules correctly as far as I can tell, and still no dice…

So I booted into Windows 8, installed Atmel Studio 6 and the drivers for the AVRISP mkii. I updated the devices firmware (to 1.16), and then tried to read the signature of the attiny85. This failed, giving me [ERROR] Failed to enter programming mode. ispEnterProgMode: Error status received: Got 0xc0, expected 0x00, ModuleName: TCF (TCF command: Device:startSession failed.). I tried it again, this time with the atmega328p from my arduino, and once again it failed. The ISP clock is dropped to 125 khz (and I've tried lower too). I know both the atmega328p and attiny85 are working still and the fuse bits were never tampered with (the blink program on the attiny from when i used my Arduino as ISP still runs).

Does this mean that my avrisp mkii is dead? All the LED lights behave exactly as expected (LED turns green with power is given to the MCU, red otherwise. USB LED is solid green and flashes when theres traffic). Additionally, it's recognized by both Windows device manager and Atmel Studio 6.

Thanks

Best Answer

There are several possible problems. One is actually udev. If it runs fine calling avrdude with sudo, you have to get your udev stuff right. In Debian Wheezy I have the following line in my /etc/udev/rules.d/56-avr.rules file:

# Atmel AVR ISP mkII
SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTRS{idVendor}=="03eb", ATTRS{idProduct}=="2104", GROUP="users", MODE="0660"

I guess you can change any appropriate group.

If that's not your error, check your circuit. A common problem is other things are connected to the ISP pin header. If you want to be sure, put the controller somewhere, where nothing else is connected to these pins and try to flash it there.

And finally: check the colors of the LED in the mkII. Errors or warnings are indicated by yellow/orange or red color. If everything is wired up correctly, the LED in the programmer is green.

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