[En-Nut-Discussion] ISP programmer with >256bytes RAM

[James A van Zee]

Greetings to all,

     I'm an 'AVR newbie' (but with many years of experience in the 'embedded 
world').  I read with interest on the webpage 
<http://www.ethernut.de/en/isp/index.html> why AVR Studio can't program EEPROM 
via the ISP interface, and noted the comment that this could be fixed by using 
an ATmega8 in place of the (now obsolete!) AT90S2313.  (BTW: there is an 
improved version, the ATtiny2313, which can now be purchased, but it still only 
has 128 bytes of RAM.)

     Since I am in the position of building something for the first time, has 
anyone already done this - i.e. replace the 'inline programming' stream with a 
'buffer the transfer, then do the programming' version, using a processor (such 
as the ATmega8) with sufficient RAM for this purpose?

     I know such a modification is 'trivial' (ha!), since one is going from 
time-critical code to non-time-critical code, but even so there is the required 
handshaking, etc. -- all of which I know nothing about at the moment (and just 
want to get on with my own project!).

     Thanks to anyone who might be able to offer some suggestions (code would 
be nice!).

                                                                Sincerely,

                                                                Jim van Zee
                                                                Seatlle, WA