atmega328 programmer question

[paulhm81]

hi
a friend of mine has a GQ-4X Willem Programmer for a good price. I have a crappy esr meter based on the atmega328 that I broke i think by not discharging a capacitor. It still works for some measurements but the esr is all over the place. My question is if this programmer is ok for reading the original atmega and program a new one. In the supported device list it says I need a AVRISP connection. I don't understand what that is because if I look at the adapters on this site - http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4282 - at the adapters it shows what seems a stand alone programmer. I don't know anything about programmers so maybe someone would enlighten me.  Does it work for the atmega328 without an adapter? Another question I have is if the gq-4x programmer is a decent one because I need one for notebooks. I'm seeing a lot of notebooks with a corrupted bios these days.

This is the list of adapters for the gq-4x - http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/LeftStart.asp?idCategory=30

thank you!

i forgot to say that i'm using the atmega328p-pu version

[majki]

Hello,

If your ESR meter is a commercial one you have no chance to read the program from the broken PIC thus it is certanly code protected. If it is an opensource meter get the latest firmware from the net.

For programming via AVRISP you probably need this adapter:
http://www.mcumall.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=4310

AVRISP = SPI mode

Best regards

[madires]

By any chance, is your ESR meter a Transistor Tester? Firmware 1.xxk (x = digit)?

[paulhm81]

By any chance, is your ESR meter a Transistor Tester? Firmware 1.xxk (x = digit)?

yes! it's 1.10K It's not a commercial one. I have a commercial esr but this one is more convenient because it shows the capacitance too ( I know it's a crappy one ). I'm sure I can find the bin somewhere. The more important question was about the capability of the programmer to write this chip.

[paulhm81]

I think I found my answer. On a forum it says:
"I have tested Atmega8 in DIP28 and QFP32 ,and the ISP does the same job when correctly connected.
You need only a 5VDC power supply between Vss and Vcc
and connect with 5 wires, /RST ,MISO ,MOSI ,SCK and GND from the GQ4X to the pins of the chip."

[madires]

yes! it's 1.10K It's not a commercial one. I have a commercial esr but this one is more convenient because it shows the capacitance too ( I know it's a crappy one ). I'm sure I can find the bin somewhere. The more important question was about the capability of the programmer to write this chip.

v1.10k is fairly current. You can get the latest version at http://www.mikrocontroller.net/svnbrowser/transistortester/Software/trunk/ and the English documentation at http://www.mikrocontroller.net/svnbrowser/transistortester/Doku/trunk/pdftex/english/.