AVR dragon any good?

[SuperMiguel]

AVR dragon any good?

I like the dragon rider =) (http://www.ecrostech.com/AtmelAvr/DragonRider/index.htm)

[ju1ce]

Really, the Dragon is unreliable. I didn't believe it either until I killed mine. Luckily Atmel gave me a new one which I sold and then bought AVRISP mkII. I think you'd be better off doing the same even though Dragon Rider looks nice.

[alm]

Was this the Dragon with or without mounting holes? The new ones with mounting holes are said to be more robust. I haven't heard of one of them committing suicide yet. The AVRISP mkII is more reliable, but it's hard to beat the Dragon on features. The next step up from the Dragon with debugging support is the JTAGice mkIII.

[olsenn]

I wouldn't really recommend the AVRISP mkII as it only does ISP programming and you can do this with an arduino, a bus pirate, or just about any other multi-use tool. It does have a nice case, and if you are going to be doing a lot of ISP for 8-bit AVR micros then it may do fine for you, but the AVR Dragon is MUCH better!

I have an AVR Dragon (one of the newer models with the mounting holes) and I've never had any problems with it. I even own an AVR ONE!, Atmel's most expensive debugger, and other than the lack of protection, I think the Dragon is better. The biggest reason to get the AVR Dragon over the others is that it supports High Voltage programming, which I promise you will save your but many times when you start to mess with fuses.

One last note; stay clear of cheap clones on ebay... they tend to not work with AVR Studio and are cheaply made.

[aluck]

Don't waste your money, get an AVR JTAGE ICE mkII clone from ebay.

[HackedFridgeMagnet]

I haven't tried the other ones,

I put a zif socket onto my Avr Dragon.
Never had any problems.
I can't say that about many programmers.

[aluck]

I haven't tried the other ones,

I put a zif socket onto my Avr Dragon.
Never had any problems.
I can't say that about many programmers.

as a programmer - it's not bad at all, but as a debug tool... had a lot of trouble trying to use debugWire with ATMega 168. it turns out, Dragon doesn't support this chip. diagnostic messages were obscure, and as it was a new design I was not sure if it is my PCB, software or Dragon. after getting JTAG ICE mkII didn't have any trouble at all.