You are clearly way ahead of me. And I deeply respect your efforts. It's a big important field, obviously. I don't claim expert. But I recently re-read some old AVR assembly language tutorial by Gerhard Schmidt. Many years ago I revised his AVR assembler, written in FreePascal, using the old Unix editor NEdit. I love long descriptive names for functions and variables, and was amazed the assembler still worked after my assault. I don't know if I read it before, but he also had a small serial port ATMEGA8515 control program for PWM and used the ancient ANSI terminal escape sequences to colorize his output. I had done an 8515 interrupt controlled serial IO and added terminal control characters to the template. And separately had done both a FreePascal and TCL terminal escape sequences coloring control. These beautiful modern Linux terminal emulators can do a lot of user interfacing. The reason I like the 8515 is because it has external memory capability. And old Atmel Studio 4 really helped me understand, to the extent I do, programming these complex little chips. I'm just hoping to do more with what I have. I'm glad this thread encouraged so many wonderful people to teach me more. Thanks again. Robert Gilbertson wrote: > Rick, > > I have used both the STK500 and Atmel-ICE programmers and think they are > overpriced. > I have migrated to OpenOCD on a Pi. > Also avoids vendor lock-in to Atmel and allows ST Micro, Renesas, > Freescale, NXP or other uC's to be used. > > Lady Ada has a nice tutorial on her site beginning here: > https://learn.adafruit.com/programming-microcontrollers-using-openocd-on-raspberry-pi > > It allows programming many uC that use SWD or JTAG and has a debugger. > > Might also check out some of the other dev boards Adafruit has. > Elecrow's crowtail or crowduino boards may be of interest also. > Elecrow also manufactures inexpensive boards if you are proficient with > KiCad or Eagle and don't mind soldering. > > Happy hacking, > Bob > > On Thursday 30/01/2020 at 12:50 pm, Rick Engebretson wrote: >> As always, thanks for your feedback. >> >> I have a nice breadboard, and some nice proto boards from "Protostack," >> and 3 Atmel STK500 development kits, and AVR Studio on 5 machines, and >> chips, and working software. I'm ready to have some soldering done. >> >> I would have replied to your kind response earlier. But about 8:30 AM I >> heard a clang outside and a little up the dirt road an old guy was >> climbing out of his truck in the ditch. He was very lucky he broke the >> sign post or he would have rolled it. He was in his 80s and it took two >> trips from the towing company in Hinckley to get him out. The towing >> company needed a bigger truck and a helper. It cost me $200 to get the >> old guy down the road without a heart attack, and he was wearing my >> brand new pair of dry wool socks leaving his wet socks on my wood stove. >> The old guy was great to meet. But I need civilization. >> >> I've tried FreeGeeks. Maybe some day I'll donate some nice stuff when I >> think they have people who know what it is. >> >> >> Iznogoud wrote: >> > Let's make this topic useful. >> > >> >> >> >> If I knew how to change topics I really want to find somebody who knows >> >> how to solder simple microcontroller boards. Are there any prototyping >> >> shops left in the city?? I would love to do some business with some >> >> civilized humans. >> >> >> > >> > You do not need a soldered board to prototype. Use a "bread board" >> and put >> > it together. Make it work first, then worry about soldering. That is >> how to >> > do it. >> > >> > Also, learning to solder --I am terrible at it-- is a great skill to >> have. >> > And having the right tools for doing it greatly accelerates quality >> and speed. >> > But right now you do not need this to prototype something. >> > >> > _______________________________________________ >> > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> > tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >> _______________________________________________ >> TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota >> tclug-list at mn-linux.org >> http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list > > > > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >