USBtiny isp

USBtinyISP is a simple open-source USB AVR programmer and SPI interface. It is low cost, easy to make, works great with avrdude, has both 6 and 10 pin standard ISP cables, is AVRStudio-compatible and tested under Windows XP and MacOS X, it may or may not work with your specific Vista/Windows 7 system, please visit the Adafruit forums before purchase.

Using this programmer and avrdude you can program any in-circuit "serial" programmable chip that avrdude supports (which is nearly all of them). It does not do JTAG or High Voltage programming. You can re-program Arduino's (and 'minimal arduinos') using this programmer. It cannot program chips with more than 64K of flash, such as the Atmega1280/1281, or Atmega2560/2561

Technical Specification

• AVRdude compatible - support for usbtiny added in v5.5!
• USB drivers available for Windows using libusb, no drivers needed for Mac OS X or Linux.
• High speed! Max clock rate is 400KHz. Write speed:1Kb/s, read speed: 2Kb/s. (Atmega8 takes 8s to write, 4s to read/verify)
• 2 LEDs to indicate "USB/Power good" and "Busy"
• I/O is buffered to allow programming of 2V-6V targets (v2)
• Works with any AVR ISP chip with 64K of flash (or less) - does not work with Atmega1281/1280/2561/2560