5.a. Firmware Support for Mac OS X

To use the Pololu USB AVR Programmer with Mac OS X, a firmware modification is required.

Installing the firmware

To install the firmware modification, the you will need to use a Windows computer, but once the modification has been applied, all of your further work can be done on the Mac.

1. Follow the steps in Section 3.a to install the Windows drivers and configuration utility for the Pololu USB AVR Programmer.
2. Download the following file to the Windows computer: Firmware version 1.06nc for the Pololu USB AVR Programmer (29k pgm).
3. Using the downloaded file, install the firmware modification by following the procedure explained in Section 9, starting with step 3 under the heading “Upgrading Firmware”.

Checking the installation

To check the installation, first plug the Pololu USB AVR Programmer into a USB port on your Mac. Click “Cancel” to dismiss the following dialog:

Next, navigate (using a Terminal window) to the /dev folder on the Mac, and verify that it contains two new entries of the form <prefix>.usbmodem<serial-number>. For example:

cu.usbmodem00000011
tty.usbmodem00000011

Later, when you are ready to flash a program to the microcontroller, you will need to pass one of these entries as a parameter to avrdude.

The serial number is unique to your Programmer.