Ok, I finally got myself an atmega168, two avrisp mk1s, and a program to load the chip. However, I go to program the chip... to find that AVR studio wants to downgrade the firmware in the programmer. Ok... fine, I let it attempt to downgrade the firmware. AVR Studio begins talking to the programmer, the green light goes out... to end with an error message (along the lines of, expected: , received: something else) and a "Verification Failed" error message thereafter.

Now, the programmer appears to have been fried. The green LED no longer comes on (at all; red, yellow, or green,) and AVR Studio appears to not be able to talk to it at all now.

So there's one down.

So, like an idiot, I decide to try my spare, without downgrading the firmware (even though this was not recommended by AVR studio.) Low and behold, I find my target application is running to fast. No surprise. So, I have AVR Studio send the instruction to set the internet clock down on the atmega168... just to have THAT operation fail in much the same manner as the first one, with the same end result!

Is there any way to revive these things, or am I now forced to do what I should have done in the first place (shelled out the fifty bucks or so for an stk?)

Thanks,

Rob M.