Re: [avr-chat] Re: Programmer for everyone!

[Joerg Wunsch]

"Graham Davies" <address@hidden> wrote:

>> what can be lifted from Atmel's designs in order to produce
>> enhanced products both freeware and commercial?

> The AVR ICE-Cube and other clones were possible because Atmel made
> the JTAG ICE design generally available.

AFAICT, it's never been officially released to the public.  The
schematics of the first ICE (still with an AT90S8535 and a separate
AT90S1200 for the bootloader) were shipped on the CD-ROM accompanying
these ICEs but apparently withdrawn later.  The PCB layout appears to
have remained the same though (only by replacing the '8535 by an
ATmega16 with an internal bootloader) so cloning was simple enough.
My guess is by the time the clones came up, the limitations of the
existing design were already obvious enough to them, so the mkII was
already on the horizon, that's why there was no need to really try
legally fighting the clones.

-- 
cheers, J"org               .-.-.   --... ...--   -.. .  DL8DTL

http://www.sax.de/~joerg/                        NIC: JW11-RIPE
Never trust an operating system you don't have sources for. ;-)