For those who want to upload the generic bootloader to an Arduino through the IDE using a USBTinyISP programmer, a customized one, or in my case because I bought one that didn’t have it (it was very cheap, I should have suspected something was wrong…).

Hardware and software materials we need:

• Arduino board (with or without bootloader)
• USBTinyISP programmer
• USB cable [type A to type B] for the programmer (the Arduino will be powered by the programmer)
• Arduino IDE (I used the latest version at that time, which was 1.0.4)

The steps are as follows:

• The USBTinyISP programmer must be correctly installed (drivers) for Windows XP and Windows Vista/7
• When connecting the Arduino to the programmer, it is connected with the ISP pins with this pinout:

 Programmer pin            Atmega328 pin
   1      Miso   <———–>  Pin 18
   2      VCC    <———–>  Pin 7
   3      SCK    <———–>  Pin 19
   4      Mosi   <———–>  Pin 17
   5      RESET  <———–>  Pin 1
   6      GRND   <———–>  Pin 8

The programmer indicates with a red stripe where PIN 1 is, and it is written on the Arduino board.

In the Arduino IDE, we must select in the tools tab:

• The Arduino board we have (UNO, mini pro, nano,…..)
• Serial port where the programmer is located
• Programmer we are going to use, in this case, USBtinyISP

Once we have these few steps, we have to go to tools and click on “Burn Bootloader”.

And in less than a minute, we will have our new bootloader.

By doing this, it uploads the BLINK program to check if it works, and the message “Finished uploading the bootloader” appears in the IDE.