arduino - ATtiny2313 refuses to be programmed after setting CPU clock to 500kHz

The other day I was writing a program for an ATtiny2313. Once it worked I decided to test it at the various clock speeds that are available and programmed through setting the LFUSE as described on page 159.

• The default clock speed is 1MHz;


• so I tried 8MHz next and all worked fine;



• Then I set the clock speed for 4MHz with the /8-prescaler resulting in 500kHz clock.

Although the controller runs the program at the expected speed, my programmer refuses to reprogram the controller since. avrdude (5.11.1) just throws the well known: 'Yikes!':

avrdude: Device signature = 0x000000
avrdude: Yikes!  Invalid device signature.
         Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
         this check.

I tried adding the -F flag, but of course that didn't either.

Here are some code sniplets I used and changed the clock speed as expected:

// 0.5MHz
FUSES = { .low = 0x62   , .high = HFUSE_DEFAULT , .extended = EFUSE_DEFAULT , };


// 1MHz (default)
FUSES = { .low = 0x64   , .high = HFUSE_DEFAULT , .extended = EFUSE_DEFAULT , };

// 8MHz
FUSES = { .low = 0xe4   , .high = HFUSE_DEFAULT , .extended = EFUSE_DEFAULT , };

For programming, I use an Arduino with the ArduinoISP (version 04m3) sketch that came with Arduino IDE 1.0.1.

This is the command to program flash:

avrType=attiny2313
avrFreq=1000000
programmerDev=/dev/ttyUSB003
programmerType=arduino
avrdude -p$(avrType) -c$(programmerType) -P$(programmerDev) -b$(baud) -v -U flash:w:$(src).flash.hex

This is the command to program the fuses:

avrdude -p$(avrType) -c$(programmerType) -P$(programmerDev) -b$(baud) -v -U lfuse:w:$(src).lfuse.hex

My question is twofold:

1. What is the reason I cannot program the controller after setting it to 500kHz clock (while the program in the controller seems to run just fine);


2. What are my options for reprogramming the fuses without using a HV-programmer? Did I perhaps miss any useful flags to avrdude?

BTW: Had the same issue once with an ATtiny45 @ 128kHz. HV-programming solves it, but I want to prevent the HV situation.

Answer

The issue, as explained, too high SPI clock frequency. There exists a fixed version of ArduinoISP that can program at lower frequency available here. Some discussion on topic is available here.