Universal AVR programmer

[zejtuni]

Hi all,

I am a newbie to AVR.
I understand there is a whole family of AVR chips- tinyAVR, mega avr, ATmega etc.
Is there a single programmer for them all ?
Do they all have 6 pin or 10 pin ISP pins ??

[adafruit_support_rick]

Is there a single programmer for them all ?

Depends on what you mean by "programmer". The chips themselves have SPI interfaces, and support programming over SPI. There is no universal device with sockets to accept any bare chip, however. You would typically create a circuit to bring out the SPI lines, and provide a system clock. You would then use a software utility such as avrdude to program the chip through an SPI interface device such as Adafruit's USBtinyISP.

Some AVRs with on-chip USB are shipped from Atmel with a USB bootloader already in flash.

If you look through the Arduino Playground, you can find more information on programing various chips:
Examples:
http://arduino.cc/playground/Code/Programmer2
http://arduino.cc/en/Hacking/ParallelProgrammer

[westfw]

The chips themselves have SPI interfaces, and support programming over SPI.

Alas, not all of them.
There is also "HV Parallel programming", which is the only way to program some of the older AVRs.
And there is "HV Serial programming", which was needed on the ATtiny11 (which gained some popularity when Atmel was selling them for $0.25 each, and lost it when the chip was discontinued.)
And there are PDI amd JTAG, used on some of the newer chips.
And there is TPI, used to program the extra-tiny ATtiny4 and similar chips.

SPI progammers like the USBtinyISP will program MOST chips, though.

[eventhorizon]

There is no universal device with sockets to accept any bare chip

What about the AVR Dragon, and STK500? don't those have plenty of sockets and configurations where in you can flash just any AVR chip?