I'm sorry, Sir. I won't be programming for you

Well, that sucked. Really sucked. And it was on a Monday too.

Let me tell you why.
(tl;dr - POS Test Clip not working)

Once I have finalised a program, it means it's code is ready for Production. So, the moment the chip has been programmed, it would be soldered onto the circuit board and that's it. So, if there is any changes after that, I would be expelling a lot of colourful expletives.

But, the codes still need to be changed. Unlike a normal chip which I can just pull it out of the socket, SMDs are a whole lot different. Desoldering SMDs requires a lot of work if your intention is to reuse them. Another alternative is what one would call ICSP (In-circuit Serial Programming) where you just connect the circuit board directly to the programmer. In this case, I would just need to solder the relevant pins from the chip to the programmer. No a problem until you realise there are tons of them lying on the table.

And so, to cut a long story short, I invested in a SMD test-clip. And after waiting for more than two months, it arrived. But after using/testing it for half and hour, it sucked. At first I thought it was because the solder got in the way. So I took a fresh chip and it failed 9 out of 10 times. Using this clip would have saved a lot of time, that is, if I had any last minute changes.

Oh well, maybe one day I would be able to find a more reliable clip but not today. I'll just let today suck monkey balls.



And so, here it is. That sucky SMD clip (black) connected to ribbon cables and then finally, to a DIL adaptor (yellow) to connect to my programmer

So, in normal sense, I would just plug this clip onto my circuit board and re-program the chip from there.
But it did not work. Damn it.