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Strange behavior with ATmega chips

Anonymous
2018-03-17
2018-03-28
  • Anonymous

    Anonymous - 2018-03-17

    I built a programmer about a year ago, and it served me well with several PIC projects. Now I wanted to experiment with the ATmega328, so I built the AVR adapter and I have some strange issues. I have no experience with AVR chips, and don't know the 'default' behavior when new.

    • The fact that the mounting holes in the suggested PC adapter are at the other side of the connectors had me confused for a while, till I realized the holes seem to have no function.

    • First I checked all connections and everything seems ok.

    • I have two different AVR chips. One marked ATmega328P-PU, one ATmega328P U (both literally) They responded somewhat differently:
    Chip marking ID Lock FUSE FUSE High FUSE Extra
    ATmega328P-PU 1E950F 0xFF 0x62 0xD0 0xFF
    ATmega328P U 1E950F 0xCF 0xFF 0xDE 0xFD

    The 328P-PU program area is read as random data, and different each read gives different values, giving the impression that the data is floating.

    The 328P U program area seems to have code (boot loader?) at the end (from 0x3e00 and up. Which could explain the 0xCF in the lock bits.

    So... questions:

    -Is this normal behavior for new chips? (i.e. can the unprogrammed area give random readouts?)
    -The '328P U' marking seems suspicious. I found no reference anywhere to this. Anyone?
    -The oscilloscope shows minor overshoots on the signals from the chips (about 0.2V). I don't think this has any influence on things though. The ground connections seem Ok.
    -According to the datasheet, AVCC should be connected. On the adapter PCB it isn't. Problematic?
    -The adapter circuit shows a jumper for use with 20-pin devices on the 28-pin sockets. The PCB doesn't have that.

     
  • Alberto Maccioni

    -New chips are usually blank.
    -No problem with small overshoots.
    -Sure, connect AVCC.
    -PCB was not updated; should be ported to Kicad but I have no time.

     

Anonymous
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