Starting The Bootloader; About The Bootloader; Trinket Usb Drivers For Windows - adafruit learning system Trinket Introduction Manual

Starting the Bootloader

About the bootloader

A bootloader is a tiny piece of software residing on the microcontroller that that helps load
your own code into the remaining space.
One of the challenges with the Trinket is that we wanted to have a built-in USB bootloader,
but the ATtiny85 doesn't have built-in USB hardware! There are existing USB bootloaders
that can work on the 't85 but they use other companies' USB VID/PIDs. Since it not permitted
by the USB developer's group
one of these existing bootloaders to use our USB ID, but we also wanted to not have to re-
compile avrdude or the Arduino IDE since that's such a pain.
So instead, Frank (our awesome engineer with mad USB chops)
created a USB bootloader that combines the elegance of V-USB with the well-supported and
tested nature of the USBtinyISP. This bootloader looks just like a USBtinyISP - and since it
uses the unique Adafruit VID/PID we own and that we added to avrdude so long ago, it works
with only very minimal configuraton tweaks. No need to recompile anything, whew!
Please note: you cannot use the Adafruit USB VID/PID for your own non-Trinket
products or projects. Purchase a USB VID for yourself at
http://www.usb.org/developers/vendor/

Trinket USB Drivers for Windows

The cool thing about the bootloader on the Trinket is it just looks like a classic USBtinyISP
AVR programmer. This makes it easy to use with AVRdude or Arduino IDE with only minor
configuration changes. Before you start, you may need to install the USBtinyISP USB drivers
Drivers are o nly required fo r Windo ws, if yo u are using a Mac o r Linux,
drivers are no t required!
For details on installing the drivers for Windows XP, 7, 8 etc... please read this
page! (http://adafru.it/cDY)
If you're good at installing drivers, you can just download the
drivers (http://adafru.it/djr)
those links
Don't forget to plug in the Trinket via a known-good USB cable to start the process. You
should see the green power LED lit and the red bootloading LED pulse indicating that the
Trinket is ready to start bootloading. If you've programmed the Trinket since getting it, you
© Adafruit
Industries
(http://adafru.it/cDW)
or Windows XP/7/Vista drivers
https://learn.adafruit.com/introducing-trinket
to use others' VID/PIDs we had to adapt
(http://adafru.it/cDX)
Windows 8
(http://adafru.it/doK) by clicking on
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