Alarm Clock First Post

I finally started doing design/testing for the alarm clock idea that I came up with about Christmas last year.

I built the programmer for the AVR microcontroller that I am using. Its the simplest programmer and uses the parallel port. Its basically a parallel port housing with 1k resistors in series to specific pins. That is it. Fits in the housing, so a picture would be pretty boring. I have to remember to apply power to the chip separately.

Which points to my next mini-step, making a stable power supply. I considered just using the 5v lines from my motherboard, but I will probably use a spare power supply that I have. I hooked up a usb hub to the motherboard power, and every once in a while I manage to short it and my computer shuts down. That would be bad in development and I don't want any fires/broken computer.

Pinouts follow:

Color	AVR	Parallel Port	Name
Black	pin 1	pin 7	AVR/RESET
Green	pin 19	pin 8	AVR SCK (clock input)
Red	pin 17	pin 9	AVR MOSI (instruction in)
White	pin 18	pin 10	AVR MISO (data out)
Silver	pin 22/8	pin 18	Signal Ground

I need to check the pinouts on my specific chip, I'll update this page with the chip model number/checked pinouts when I get there.

Reference: AVRDUDE
Its dirt cheap and really basic. Now to find out if it works... LED blinking, here I come!