Modern Device Forum

We have had some JeeLinks, JeeUSBs and JeeNode SMDs that refuse to upload under Windows 7 when using the Optiboot bootloader. Optiboot has shipped on those boards for about four months now.

If you have one of those boards, AND are using Windows 7 and are having problems, AND have hardware to do so (whew)
It is probably a good idea to update to Arduino 1.0 and to update your bootloader to the newer Optiboot version (4.4) that is included with the Arduino 1.0 release to see if solves your upload problems. Of course you are also welcome to ditch Optiboot entirely and go back to, what we found was, the entirely trouble-free Duemilanove bootloader.

If uploads seem to be working then I would say to stick with the bootloader that came on your board.

We tested a board in the shop with Windows 7 and it seemed to upload fine with the new Optiboot4.4. We are also looking for user feedback on whether Windows users still have upload issues. Both Modern Device and JeeLabs are mostly Mac shops ( we have some aging Linux and Windows machines too) so we would like to get some user reports with various models of newer Windows machines. (The ones that seem to be giving us headaches right now).

Paul Badger
Modern Device

I definitely had this problem with a JeeNode v6 434Mhz and Vista. The JeeNode arrived with OptiBoot but could not handle uploads. I got the ubiquitous avrdude sync error which, unfortunately, covers a huge range of potential problems (ie avrdude: stk500_getsync(): not in sync: resp=0x00)

The solution, as Paul says, is to reprogram the firmware to Optiboot 4.4, which is included in the Arduino 1.0 release. The code difference is a one-line change which increases the watchdog delay from 500ms to 1s. This discussion at JeeLabs has some more information - http://forum.jeelabs.net/comment/5930

As noted, you will need an ICSP programmer. I used a bus pirate because that's all I had available and it was incredibly slow (45mins) but it worked.

presnell,

I want to correct one nit-picking error in your post.
Optiboot 4.4 was not just a one-line code change - that was Jean-Claude's bootloader hack.
Optiboot4.4 addresses three or four potential issues, all with Windows systems.

In any case, the bugs are dead and I'm sure they'll stay that way. At least until a new Windows release breaks things yet again.

Paul