I like my chinese USBasp clone very much. It’s got a semi dodgy USB-connector, it’s a little bit dusty and it doesn’t didn’t even have the “new” 2011-firmware, but I still like it. But what if it died? What would take it’s place? My business card of course!

Of course there’s the minor problem that USBasp is designed for ATMega8/88 and to run at 12mhz but since it can run on an ATTiny85 I figured it couldn’t be that hard to port it to the ATTiny84, since both my business card and USBasp uses vUSB.

Turns out: It wasn’t bad at all. And in case my USBasp dies some day, my bizcard is now self replicating.

So. If you’re missing a programmer for ISP or TPI and you only have an ATTiny84 lying around, the code I just put on github should do the trick.

The downside, compared to my USBasp clone, is that it doesn’t support 3.3V, but the upside is that it’s actually more handy because of the micro usb connector, so I no longer need a USB extender cable or long jumper wires. And of course the BOM is hardly more expensive than the price of a chinese USBasp clone.

Also – I used it to finally upgrade the firmware on my old USBasp clone so that it now supports TPI. Expect to see some projects featuring the ATTiny10 soon 😉

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