Talk:Your First AVR Order

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I just made my first order, and I skipped some of the parts here that have me a touch confused. Specifically, I didn't order the .100" pin headers, and I couldn't see a good way to connect them to the solderless breadboard. I can only visualize setting some of the pins up on each side of the breadboard and using 2 different sockets, one on each side. This would turnout, to my mind, rather ugly. I'm looking through the catalog that DigiKey sent me, and I think the DIP connectors on page 40 would work quite well. They're available in 10 to 40 pin versions. They look like they'd plug nicely across the breadboard, and could make wiring to the STK500 pretty easy. I know it was a pain to remove the ATTiny2313 I was working with every time I wanted to change a line or two of code to debug my program. Having one of these would have made it a breeze. Jachim 21:16, 22 January 2007 (PST)

I agree with Jachim, and disagree with whoever wrote "... so your AVR will have to be on your proto board, which is painful to deal with ...". I much prefer leaving my microcontroller plugged into the solderless breadboard (or leaving it on a PCB), and occasionally plugging and unplugging the in-circuit programmer into the connector next to it. I find that much more convenient that pulling the microcontroller, plugging it into a programmer, pulling the microcontroller, and plugging it back in place. --DavidCary 23:09, 2 July 2007 (PDT)

p.s.: Jachim, the DIP socket looks like a clever idea -- perhaps it will work better than what I'm doing now (and what I assume the original author is using). Now I connect the in-circuit programmer to a single row of 0.100" headers on the breadboard. Forgive the crude ASCII diagram:

   [ ] -- microcontroller
   [ ]
   [ ]
   [ ] * }
   [ ] * } "direct" header pins
   [ ] * }
       *
       * } "indirect" header pins
       *
       * -- header pins

My in-circuit programmer has a cable ending in a single socket that fits exactly on top of that single row of header pins.

The solderless breadboard connects the "direct" header pins to some of the microcontroller pins. The other pins of the microcontroller needed by the in-circuit programmer (perhaps they are on the other side of the microcontroller) are connected by standard breadboard wire connections to the "indirect" header pins.

--DavidCary 23:09, 2 July 2007 (PDT)