Modular clock problems

Moved to "Arduino Nixie Clock Kit Support Forum" where it's on topic and will get more views.

To the best of my knowledge no stripped down version of the software exists. Closest thing would be the Test Mode that runs on a freshly flashed board and/or after doing a factory reset. You've probably encountered the test mode: all 6 tubes count from 0 - 9 repeatedly with LEDs cycling through primary colors, then shuts off after 1 minute.

The 10 hour tube not lighting sounds familiar. Exactly which boards do you have - Rev. 3 or Rev. 3.01? This is important as several I/O changes were made from Rev. 3 to 3.01. The revision should be printed on the boards, kind of in between the 10sec and 1min tubes. You need to check in the code and maybe change a #define that is right after all the includes. #define FWV2 for a 3.01 board or #define REV3 for a 3 board.

Not sure why you are having a hard time flashing. How are you going about it? By far the easiest way is to stick with the chips that came with the kits (if they run at all they're 99.9% certainly not bad chips) because the bootloader is already on them and you don't have to mess with fuses. Plug the chip into an UNO and flash away from the Arduino IDE.

If you insist on flashing "virgin" chips you need some sort of ISP that lets you talk to the Atmega's SPI interface. I use an old AVRISP Mk.II with good results.
1) Set fuses. From command line say:but change the "-c" option to match your particular ISP.
2) Cycle power to the chip!!
3) In Arduino IDE make sure that Tools -> Programmer is set to match your ISP.
4) Do Tools -> Burn Boot Loader
5) Cycle power to the chip!!
6) Now flash like you would do any other Arduino.

Also... after consulting my big Atmel data book I'd say it makes no difference whether eFuse is set to 0x05 or 0xfd. There is no functional difference between the two. The difference is that someone seems to have decided it's better to set 5 unused bits to 1 instead of 0. Whatever. I've never had a problem using 0x05.

If you'd rather use, that's fine, make the obvious change to that avrdude command in my previous post...

I can confirm that it is "normal" that the fuse flashing complains about the difference between 0x05 and 0xfd.

It is NOT important that you have a boot loader installed. It is there on the standard chips to allow people who have an Arduino UNO to pop the chip from the clock into the Arduino board they have to reprogram it. It is not needed for the clock itself.

The "stripped down" firmware is the mode that the clock comes up in after a factory reset. This removes all of the tricky stuff around the HV generation and just runs it in the simplest mode possible. It also cycles the digits so you can get a good test of them. NOTE: The test mode turns off after 60 seconds, exactly because the HV feedback control is not used, and things could thermally run away. If you want more time, power off and on again.

It's a really good point about the different board versions, Ty, I had forgotten that.

It's great that you are able to program your own chips - I'm sure that we'll get it sorted out quickly. I keep a reference board of each version, and the differences are managed in the code as #defines, so we can run up compatible versions for pretty much anything quickly.

Tim,

Yes we'll get it sorted one way or another. Let us know what other problems there are. Please post in as much detail as possible - I'd rather read a wall of text and look at pictures then have to go back and forth asking for clarifications!