How To Build and Burn Arduino UNO Bootloader with STK500

Before there was such a thing as an Arduino (B.A., before Arduino), AVR enthusiasts wrote programs using  avrlibc and uploaded “sketches” using development boards such as the STK200 and STK500.  A.A. (after Arduino), my STK500 has been sitting in my “Project Bits” bin, and my STK200 lives in my “Circuit Boards” bin, which is essentially a scrap-heap where I go to scavenge parts.  If, like me, you still have a dusty STK500 and would like to put it to good use, here is how you can use it to burn the Arduino Optiboot bootloader onto an Arduino Uno.

Hardware

Connect the STK500 to a power source (12V) and a serial port (RS232 CTRL).   Place jumpers on VTARGET, AREF, RESET, XTAL1, and OSCSEL (You may not actually need to do this, but it works without having to dig up the old STK500 manual to find out what those jumpers actually do!).

Next, connect the Arduino’s ISP port to the ISP6PIN header.  If your cable has a red stripe, it indicates Pin 1.  On the Arduino, Pin 1 is indicated by a silkscreened dot on the PCB.  If you are programming a chip that isn’t inserted into an Arduino, I imagine you could insert it into SCKT3200A2 or SCKT3500D, but you’d probably have to check the STK500 manual to confirm which one.  Line-up the notch in the end of the chip with the notch in the end of the socket.

The Arduino will be powered by the ISP so you don’t need to provide separate power.  Test that everything is working by reading the ATMEGA328 chip on the UNO:

$ sudo avrdude -P /dev/ttyS0 -c stk500v2 -p m328p
avrdude: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.01s
avrdude: Device signature = 0x1e950f
avrdude: safemode: Fuses OK
avrdude done.  Thank you.

(change the port number if required)

Software

This assumes you are using Linux and have the Arduino IDE installed and can compile and upload sketches.  The Arduino environment includes the libraries and compiler you need to build the source.  You’ll also want “make” and “git” and a few others:

sudo apt-get install make git
sudo apt-get install gcc-avr avr-libc avrdude
sudo apt-get install arduino

Now get the Arduino source.

git clone https://github.com/arduino/Arduino.git

The whole source is 1.4G, of which you’ll only need 16M, so you may just want to use the sources installed by the IDE.  On Ubuntu, see /usr/share/arduino.  I recommend making a copy as you’ll need to make some changes.

Change to the ./hardware/arduino/bootloaders/optiboot directory and make the following changes:

ISPPORT should match the STK500’s serial port and the MCU_TARGET is set for newer Arduinos.  The main function is changed from ‘naked’ to ‘OS_main’ to prevent avr-gcc 4.5.3 from creating binaries that are too large (more details here).

With these changes in place, build and burn the bootloader by running:

make atmega328      #build only, or...
make atmega328_isp  #build and program

Using ‘make’ to flash the device will not only upload the HEX files, but also set the required fuses.

 Test

Confirm the new bootloader is working by loading the Arduino IDE and uploading a sketch.