On patience and USB AVR programmers

Ideas & Inspirations

I have been trying to make my AVR programmers work with my laptop for since I got my laptop. But it seems that the laptop hardware is not really like the hardware that was with my desktop. Thus, the device is not detected. I was out of work, thus I decided today, I am going to make the USBasp work with the laptop. I couldn't unfortunately.

But I gained something from today's failure. I found out a AVRISP mkII clone derived from USBasp hardware. All the same circuit, just change the firmware and it will do. It's a very good project, making the USBasp hardware AVR Studio compatible. I thank the Guy who made the modification. The link to the site is http://avr.mytutorialcafe.com/?p=101

I converted my USBasp to AVRISP mkII clone and also my friend's USBasp (He gave it to me for fixing). Now I my programmer, which was compatible only with the desktop, is now also compatible with AVRStudio. Which is a great plus for embedded programmers who are using AVRGCC with AVR-Studio on Windows. But I am still stuck, it's not working with my laptop.

Today I failed to,

1. Make the Arduino bootloader work.

2. Make the programmers compatible with laptop.

3. Determine the cause of both.

What I learned today is that I can be more patient just by trying.

I had to walk to-and-fro so many times transferring components and all to my tiny workshop to the room where my good old desktop resides. It was pretty easy for me to lose nerves. But somehow, I kept working on, without any hope of success. I was amazed by the numbness. I went completely indifferent to the possible outcome of a certain solution that I was trying to put into the circuit. But my mind still worked on searching for newer solutions.

I think this is what patience is all about. You cannot really be excited and patient at the same time. You need to remove almost everything that might induce excitation. Only then you can have heart rate comparable to calibrated atomic clocks and nerves cool enough is liquefy nitrogen (I like to exaggerate sometimes). And while you are working on something pretty complex, and you need to troubleshoot on the run, you need all of these qualities.