configure the LCDuino with this wiring:
this is the standard arduino pins d13,12,11,10 (top row of ribbon cable) and then leds on d9,8,7. this is one popular description of what needs to be done: http://hlt.media.mit.edu/?p=1229
the brown wire is 5v and black is ground.
the brown electrolytic on the bottom right that is soldered to the reset button needs some explaining. normally, the LCDuino (or any arduino) needs a reset from the PC when it gets new programming. but when you use the LCDuino as an 'isp' (programmer), you want to disable the pc's auto-reset over serial. the cap helps squash the reset so it does not disturb the ISP program that is always running in this LCDuino. you can tell its running the ISP program by looking at the green _D9 'heartbeat' led. it slowly rises up and down in intensity, different from the on/off blinking other leds have. speaking of leds, the yellow comes on right before programming starts and goes out right after. the red should only come on if there's an error.
again, make sure there is NO cap across the reset line when you first load the special ISP program (included in arduino-022 and later) into the LCDuino. after that and from then on, you solder the cap on and you use this LCDuino to 'burn' 8-pin controller chips (others too, of course; its now a general chip programmer).
full system view:
I used some ribbon cable to go from the new isp programmer (lcduino) to the new target device board. I can program chips on that small board, remove the 6pin cable and power the chip up on its own and hopefully see it run the program we just gave it. there's a diag led (yellow) on the target board and its connected to the digital-0 pin which is sort of like the standard led-13 led on arduinos. when we run the 'blink' demo program, we change the pin number from 13 to 0, compile and download the code to 8pin chip and when done, that yellow light should start running the blink demo. (and it does!)
underside of the target carrier board:
the blue resistor is just for the diag led and they are both optional. the bypass cap is also optional but I put it there just for good practice (.1uf).
that's all the essentials. you do have to download the 'core' for the 45/85 series chips (follow the web link I gave) but once the setup is done, you can write programs for these small, cheap chips. no crystal needed, either (you get 1mhz clock by default, I believe).
