Introduction
This is a simple AVR programmer based on the free PonyProg design. I have taken the flexible "module" based PonyProg design and arranged it to suit a standard 6 pin Atmel AVR ISP header. To use this programmer you must have an old style serial port on your PC. Although I have never tried it, I have read that a USB to serial convertor fails to work. I guess this is because PonyProg must manipulate the bits on the serial port directly.
Schematic and PCB
Pretty simple! I used a MPSA42 as the transistor as I had one to hand; in practice I would expect most small NPN transistors to work - the board layout is for CBE pinout. transistor. One last comment, the header (SV1) is shown as a 10 pin header but is wired using pins 1 - 6 only in the standard Atmel 6 pin fashion - this layout is NOT the standard Atmel 10 pin version.
NB The design is not mine - I extracted the schematic from the original design by Claudio Lanconelli.
You should look in the "/AVR Projects/AVR ISP Pony Prog" folder.
Software
The software is not mine. You get the free PonyProg software from the author's website. The website also contains details of using PonyProg with other hardware arrangements, other controllers and eeprom memories.