A week of commutes yielded the standalone Atmega board, but it didn't take a program. The Arduino ISP generated all the right signals, sending 0xac 0x53 0x00 0x00 to enter programming mode, but the Atmega stood silent.

Getting this far was a bit harder than the marketing. 1st, most Arduino UNO's end up in a drawer, never to be seen again. The remaneder get used in a project which is never finished or turned on once & put away. Almost never is a project converted to a standalone board.

There is the standard guide http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoToBreadboard

Since every version of the Arduino IDE is different, the guide is almost useless. The Breadboard1-5-x.zip file needed to be decompressed directly into the arduino-1.6.0/hardware directory. Then the hardware/breadboard/avr/boards.txt file needed a very cryptic line:

atmega328bb.bootloader.tool=arduino:avrdude

Flashing a bootloader would 1st require installing the examples->ArduinoISP sketch on the UNO. That required having "Arduino UNO" as the board, "ArduinoISP" as the programmer. Open the serial monitor, set baud rate 19200 & send 1[space] to verify the ArduinoISP is running.

Then change the programmer to "Arduino as ISP" change the board to "Atmega 328 on a breadboard" & select tools->"burn bootloader". That invoked the ArduinoISP sketch properly. It generated all the right signals, but the target Atmega didn't send anything on MISO or even put it in output mode.

Tried slowing down the ArduinoISP to 32khz by changing CLKPR, increasing the delays to 1 second in start_pmode, connecting all the GND & Vcc on the target. It was still dead.

The next step would be making an Atmega breakout board just for programming the qfp32 package, with room for trying a crystal & serial port. Using a tried & true PIC or stm32 is a lot more productive than starting a new microcontroller.

Jack : I started to monkey around with the speed mask of the dweeno since reading your post . I am finding that to do ANY sketch or bootloader for these has to be done at full speed . I also added a .1uF cap onto the FT232 dongle to make sure there was no false triggering for using the USB to RS232 option . Otherwise it loads fine on the 2560 , 328 , UNO , Leonardo ; any of them when you use the properly selected bootloader setting . Setting the bit mask for the clock divider is in the sketch anyway is it not ? Keep onwards . RickC