Did you check for bad solder joints? Sometimes they look good, but make only a bad connection.
Checked with multimeter, everything's got good continuity. Looking at the joints, many look 'cold jointed', but any that had continuity issues were reflowed immediately.
On any command, even when trying to program or read out the fuses? If you've successfully programmed the fuses to the values I've posted here before, then you'll have to make sure that the crystal is hooked up correctly, even for programming. This is because the fuse settings instruct the AVR to use an external oscillator for its clock. The "target doesn't answer" error seems reasonable if there's no clock.
Yeah, any command...but only sometimes!
If I unplug the programmer from the computer I can get it to pretend to behave for one operation, then it starts acting dumb again. Whatever operation I can get it to do fails in some manner or another.
Crystal is hooked up in correct position. Dumb question: there is NO type of "polarity" on a crystal, correct?
At the advice of the seller of the programmer, I've started using -B # switch on the commands to slow it down. The device signature problems went away when I tried 0.1, and it appeared to successfully write the bootloader, but then the content didn't match when it was done. It took around 7-8 seconds to do it so it wasn't an "insta-fail".
So probably not a power problem, but if you have other USB ports, you could give them a try, too.
Have tried the programmer on all 4 of my laptop's USB ports.
When getting alternate power for the ATmega32 being programmed, it's just connected to a powered hub with no USB connection out of the hub...just using it for power. Power at the hub ports is good.
Is the second AVR pristine, i.e., with the fuses still in factory settings? If so, it should respond even with no external oscillator attached. We could rule out a bad crystal then.
Second one does not have fuses programmed.
Apparently, neither does the first. They keep changing themselves back to 0, as avrdude likes to inform me.
Hard to say what's the real problem. Could still be a pure software problem. Did you upgrade to a new version of avrdude already? Also try running avrdude more verbosely (like -vvvvv) to see what's going on. The example in the manual for the programmer sets option "-P usb"; I've never needed that one, but it could be a Windows thing (OTOH, it seemed to work for you w/o -P before).
I can't upgrade to a newer version of avrdude because a newer version doesn't exist compiled and working and including USB support...for Windows.
Regarding -P, apparently "atmega32" is incorrect, BTW. It's "m32". I started making some progress after making that change, but it's back to how it was before. Will try -P usb (you're the second to mention it) on next attempt.
Verbose...if next attempt gives problems, I'll re-do it verbosely and throw the output here.
Did you try Linux instead of Windows? A live CD like the Ubuntu installer should be enough for testing. Avrdude can be installed while running the live Ubuntu system, without touching your harddisks.
No, I don't trust Windows.
Linux...do not want, but will try as a last resort. I don't believe the type of issues showing up here CAN result from an OS incompatibility...the inconsistent nature of the failures and the fact that they change somewhat from attempt to attempt tells me this. A pure OS incompatibility would hang up in the exact same way every time because the OS isn't allowing something to happen...
If you have a breadboard, try setting up a minimal circuit just consisting of the AVR, the crystal oscillator, the three capacitors, and the 10k resistor. Leave out all the USB-related stuff. Then hook up your programmer and try again. If the minimal circuit works, then your bigger circuit must be wrong. Without a breadboard, you could still try this with wires, even if it's crude.
No breadboard, but setting up with wires should be doable. My patience is going out the window however.
There's a reason I dislike open source software such as avrdude. This is the reason.
Not that it doesn't work...that there's no phone number to call and give them a piece of my mind.