Which programmer supports "-E reset"?

[Tropaion]

Hello, I don't know where to ask/find it. I have an application, where, when the programming an ATxmega32E5 is done, the reset signal should stay activated until said otherwise. I have the programmers AVRISP MK2 and Atmel ICE and tried both. With both it says "avrdude warning: -E option not supported by this programmer type", but I can't find anywhere, which programmers support this. So, can someone tell which programmer I should use?

[stefanrueger]

Good question! Originally -E was implemented for parallel programmers (remember the parallel port for printers from the last millennium?). Only a couple of other programmers followed suit. Looking at the source code we have

$ grep "parseexitspecs *= *[^=]" -r src
src/pgm.c:  pgm->parseexitspecs = NULL;
src/par.c:  pgm->parseexitspecs = par_parseexitspecs;
src/linuxspi.c:    pgm->parseexitspecs = linuxspi_parseexitspecs;
src/flip2.c:  pgm->parseexitspecs   = flip2_parseexitspecs;

Maybe the hardware pros amongst the team can help out with alternative ways of doing what you want to achieve... @mcuee @MCUdude

[Tropaion]

remember the parallel port for printers from the last millennium?

I'm too young for that, but I think I know what you mean 😄 . I currently have an working but not very nice solution. I keep an python thread running in the background which keeps avrdude open in terminal mode, but sometimes this creates some annoying issues. This was also the reason I came upon the "-E" command while searching for alternatives.

[mcuee]

@MCUdude

I think you are more familar with Microchip tools like Atmel ICE. Maybe you can help to see if we can offer such an options for some of the programmers.

[mcuee]

@stefanrueger and @MCUdude

I think we can probably implement such an option for programmers which can toggle the reset pin at different state.

linuxgpio should be one candidate. @stefanrueger mentioned that linuxspi already has -E support.

We have some programmers which have similar functions, not using -E. I think serialupdi is one example.

• https://github.com/avrdudes/avrdude/pull/811

[MCUdude]

I'll look into what it would take to implement this for jtag3 programmers.

@dioannidis I don't know much about the USBasp firmware, but it is possible to leave the reset pin low after programming?

[Tropaion]

@MCUdude That would be really nice, especially for Microchip tools. But I'm really surprised that this topic never came up if you consider how long avrdude exists.

[dioannidis]

@MCUdude

@dioannidis I don't know much about the USBasp firmware, but it is possible to leave the reset pin low after programming?

IIRC yes it's possible but let me check to confirm

[MCUdude]

I'll look into what it would take to implement this for jtag3 programmers.

I've been in contact with the Microchip developers who are in charge of the JTAG3/EDBG firmware. It's not possible to leave the reset pin low after a programming session, so there is not much we can do about this...

IIRC yes it's possible but let me check to confirm

@dioannidis thank you! The USBasp is the go-to programmer for lots and lots of people. If this was possible, the USBasp just became a little more useful!