Still Wrapping up the Mega2560 Bootloader

More on the continuing drama of the 2560 bootloader.  Most recent post on this is here.

I just moved a lot of my code up to IDE 1.0.3 and decided to check and see if they had updated the bootloader in this.  Well, they haven't.  I just used it to program a 2560 and the bootloader supplied with the release failed on both the '!!!' and the watchdog timer problems.

But, I went searching to see if there was some schedule and ran across another bootloader that works.  This one is smaller because the author removed the code that samples for the '!!!' to jump into a rom monitor.  So, there is no problem with '!!!' because it doesn't look for it, and the watchdog timer works.  Plus, we get a little code space back (not that it matters on a 2560).  I tested it with several things and successfully loaded code that exceeds 60K (biggest I currently have) to the board.  The hex file is in text form here <link>.  If you want to get it and try it, just copy and paste it into notepad and save it as a .hex file.  I used an AVRISP mk 2 to replace the bootloader, I haven't tried any other device for programming the chip.

Here is the code I used to test the two problems notice the '!!!' in the Serial.print:

Code:

#include <avr/wdt.h>

void setup(){

  wdt_reset();   // First thing, turn it off
  wdt_disable();
  Serial.begin(57600);
  Serial.println("Hello, in setup!!!");
}

int firstTime = true;

void loop() {
      if (firstTime){
        firstTime = false;
        Serial.println("In loop waiting for Watchdog");
        wdt_enable(WDTO_8S);    // eight seconds from now the device will reboot
      }
      // now just do nothing
}

It's annoying that they haven't updated the IDE with a version that works.  But, there are a couple of solutions that work now.