Have you gotten this USBtiny to work, ever?

It has never programmed a chip

Or, if you have access to an Arduino board or Arduino clone

No, but willing to learn more

installing the software on a different computer

In works

can you recomend a prebuilt programmer? It is one of the last couple of things left.

Update:

set up on my laptop (windows 7) same result
set up on my work machine (windows Xp) same result
resoldered every connenection
attempted again same result

They way I see it:

I either have a bum programmer or windows is my block.

I am not sure what to do

This sounds like an issue with the USBtinyISP or its software, so the right place to ask for help about it is at the Adafruit forums. You should indicate that you've tried multiple targets and that you've verified the connections. We do use and resell the kit, but they're the authority and know much more about it than we do.

This sounds like an issue with the USBtinyISP or its software, so the right place to ask for help about it is at the Adafruit forums. You should indicate that you've tried multiple targets and that you've verified the connections. We do use and resell the kit, but they're the authority and know much more about it than we do

Understood

I do have a post running there as well.

EMSL has responded and helped me more, and on a more timely manner, shall we say. I thnk you for that. The number of views on this thread tells me that I am not alone in my quest to program these devices.

In a post for a premade programmer i saw you rcommended the ATAVRISP2 Do you still think that is a good one? The cost difference between makeing one and getting this one is minimal.

The AVRISP mkII is a fine programmer, and mostly equivalent to the USBtiny. I've found them to be a little less reliable in general, but getting one would be a good way to move forward. If nothing else, you can substitute it in and figure out if the problem is with the programmer or not.

Several updates

1. After several posts on adafruit they determined my usbtiny to be officially not working and offered to credit me or replace it. I opted for replacement because i really wanted to make it work. I have not made the new one yet but intend to do so and test it.

2. I also ordered a atmel AVRISP mkII programer and with in 30 minutes or so of researching a windows 7 64bit usb driver for it. I was able to grab a hex file (larson_jm) and wrote it to a blank chip and the led blinks. ( sounds of trumpets and choir). I opted for buying a mkII because i really needed a whole new path to see if i could get any programmer to work. I wrote it with avr studio.

I am confident i will be able to get the usbtiny working with some time and patients. It was nice to know that I can at least write to a chip, knowing that allows me move on start hacking my larson scanners and building other projects.

I'm very glad to hear that you got things working, and thank you for the update. These things usually work pretty well, once they work at all.