Parallel Port Programmer

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By Marc de Vinck
Posted 2009/06/11 @ 7:12 am
Category Arduino, Electronics

This is a really inexpensive way to program your Arduino. In fact, it’s a really cheap way to program any ATmega8 chip. However, there are a few drawbacks. It only works with Windows, and you can’t communicate back to the host computer for serial communications. Despite some of the drawbacks, I still like this solution since many people would have all the parts needed to make one right now. Check out the link for the complete build details.

Equipment

Soldering iron
Hot glue gun (optional)

You’ll need (parts):

(2x) 470 ohm resistor (yellow-purple-brown)
(1x) 220 ohm resistor (red-red-brown)
(1x) Parallel port cable or parallel-to-serial adapter
(2x) Three wire cables with female connectors on one end, unattached wires on the other

More about making a Parallel Port Programmer

In the Maker Shed:

More about the Arduino Mega in the Maker Shed

BY Marc de Vinck

I currently teach in Lehigh University’s Master’s of Technical Entrepreneurship program. I'm also an kit maker, author, father, tinkerer, and member of the MAKE Technical Advisory board.

In the Maker Shed

11 Responses to Parallel Port Programmer

Avr Dude on June 12th, 2009 at 1:59 am said:

“It only works with Windows, and you can’t communicate back to the host computer for serial communications.”

It does not only work with Windows, you can use this parallel programmer just as well under Linux, and while I don’t have experience with that, I’d be surprised if it wouldn’t work under MacOS as well.
As for the serial communications, of course, this is a programmer, what do you expect Talking to the chip _does_ work, and you _do_ get the responses as well…

This has been around for at least as long as the AVRs themselves.

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- Marc de Vinck on June 12th, 2009 at 7:47 am said:
  
  Yeah, I was a little hesitant to add that to the post, but it was on the original site. I assumed it would work on Linux. On a mac, well, no parallel ports on a Mac, but I guess you could use a USB -> Parallel, but that defeats the ‘cost savings’ right?
  
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worf on June 12th, 2009 at 3:55 am said:

cant you find any older stuff?
this is yeaars old and the should be more interesting things to blog here.
have a try.

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- Marc de Vinck on June 12th, 2009 at 7:44 am said:
  
  Yes it’s old….and yes I think a lot of our readers could benefit from posting about it.
  
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Gizmo on June 12th, 2009 at 5:54 am said:

And this post describes the differences and how to build them:

http://circuitgizmos.com/wordpress/?p=272

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Drew on June 12th, 2009 at 7:36 am said:

Whether information is old or new, there’s someone out there that doesn’t know it. Namely, me. I didn’t know that such a thing was so easy to build. Thanks, Make:, for sharing this!

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- Marc de Vinck on June 12th, 2009 at 7:48 am said:
  
  Thanks Drew….and you are very welcome!
  
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DoScythes on June 12th, 2009 at 1:16 pm said:

an instructable on the same thing was posted a long time ago:

http://www.instructables.com/id/Ghetto-Programming%3a-Getting-started-with-AVR-micro/

Can’t complain about the repost; I got into microcontrollers after I discovered that I could make a microcontroller programmer entirely out of parts on hand. It’s pretty rare that a single post leads to so many new projects.

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Nuno on June 12th, 2009 at 1:28 pm said:

In this article I wrote here:
http://embeddeddreams.com/site/2008/10/05/starting-up-programming-avr-microcontrollers/

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dam.mellis.org on June 19th, 2009 at 1:26 pm said:

Wow. A bit scary to see one’s crappy sketch on the Make blog.

Funnily enough, I just found the parallel programmer pictured in the tutorial in an old box of junk. It stills work too!

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- Marc de Vinck on June 19th, 2009 at 5:44 pm said:
  
  OK, it may not be the “best” illustration, but it did get the job done, so it’s perfect. Thanks for sharing and posting your sketch!
  
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