I bought a smartieparts programmer (v2.3) and an LED backlight and installed it in my Turnigy 9x.
I downloaded Eepe using the MAC OSX installer (http://eepe.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/eepe.dmg) and the latest ER9X HEX file from http://code.google.com/p/er9x/. I'm using Mac OS 10.6.8 and I DID NOT HAVE TO DOWNLOAD ANY EXTRA DRIVERS. The instructions for this process aren't very clear on the web.
The first time I tried to flash or communicate with the Tx with Eepe, I got the AVRDUDE error that other people reported
avrdude.exe: initialization failed, rc=-1
avrdude.exe: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions
avrdude.exe: Device signature = 0x000000
avrdude.exe: Yikes! Invalid device signature.
avrdude.exe: Expected signature for ATMEGA64 is 1E 96 02
and a popup that said AVRDUDE did not finish correctly.
After this, my radio wouldn't boot up anymore. It just said eeprom error and had a infinite beep playing as long as it was powered on. I thought I had bricked the radio, but I was easily able to fix it.
I did some research and 99% of all internet resources pointed towards malfunctioning hardware, and then some people randomly recommended messing with the baud rate. Some people say take your smartieparts board out and check the connections, or solder the programmer into the motherboard. Most of the evidence was pointing this way. I decided to inspect the hardware even though I was fairly certain it wasn't a hardware problem. After pulling just 2 screws from the radio, I changed my mind and decided to try the baud rate fix first. After all, it's much easier than pulling the radio apart.
So basically the only thing I did (WHICH FIXED THE PROBLEM FOR ME) was very simple.
If you're using AVRDUDE command line, add '-b 19200' to the command. So the full command for me was
avrdude -c usbasp -p atmega64 -b 19200 -U flash:w: <--- and the put in the path to the file location for the hex file you want to use after the colon (no spaces).
I just basically specified a baud rate and it fixed everything.
If you want to use Eepe with this fix implemented, you have to edit the config file, which means you must first find the config file. If you aren't comfortable with linux command lines I would definitely consult someone or make a backup of the avrdude.conf file in case you mess it up. If you can search for the file and find it in the Finder, you can probably edit it easier with textedit or some other GUI text program.
My avrdude.conf file was located at /usr/local/etc/avrdude.conf
To open the file in a text-based editor in the Terminal window, type in vim /usr/local/etc/avrdude.conf
The press 'i' once (no quotes) to edit the file
Change the baudrate from <num> to <19200> as shown below.
then press ':wq!' (no quotes) to overwrite the existing file. The file has read only protection so you have to type in the '!' at the end to force save your changes.
Reboot Eepe if you had it open just in case. The changes should take effect.
I don't know why this fixes the problem. I'm no electronics expert. In fact, I'm curious how fast I can take the baudrate before it fails? If it's a matter of baudrate being too fast or not specifying baudrate that screws it up? I'm not sure. All I know is my radio and Eepe work now.
