AVR Freaks

Hi.  I'm new to the forum -- this LOOKS like the most correct forum for my question, since it starts out with the announcement of the firmware in question.

I loaded the Xplain Bridge firmware to my Xplain rev4. (Thank you, by the way... this thing has been collecting dust since 2010 once I figured out that I'd need to go buy something else to program it.)

With the Atmel Studio version firmware, almost everything works great from Atmel Studio.  Signature read worked.  I could not read out the original demo program/EEPROM (always errored out), [I wanted to save it before I overwrote it with my programs], but i was able to load a LED blinky code of my own and have it work.

I switched over to avrdude/CrossPackAVR under Mac OS X and it doesn't seem to be working quite right.  I changed the bridge firmware to the avrdude version (though on reading the thread history, perhaps this was only needed for avrdude under Windows):

First, with AVRdude 6.0.1 which came with CrossPackAVR, I can't even read the signature:

AVR $ avrdude -p x128a1u -C /usr/local/CrossPack-AVR/etc/avrdude.conf -c avrispmkII -P usb -U signature:r:test.hex:h
avrdude: stk500v2_recv_mk2: error in USB receive
avrdude: usbdev_send(): wrote -107 out of 1 bytes, err = usb_bulk_write: An error occured during write (see messages above)
avrdude: stk500_send_mk2(): failed to send command to serial port

I downloaded and compiled AVRdude 6.3 from source.  At least the signature read seems to work:

avrdude-6.3 -p x128a1u -C /usr/local/CrossPack-AVR/etc/avrdude.conf -c avrispmkII -P usb -U signature:r:test.hex:h

avrdude-6.3: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.00s

avrdude-6.3: Device signature = 0x1e974c (probably x128a1u)

avrdude-6.3: NOTE: Programmer supports page erase for Xmega devices.

             Each page will be erased before programming it, but no chip erase is performed.

             To disable page erases, specify the -D option; for a chip-erase, use the -e option.

avrdude-6.3: reading signature memory:

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.00s

avrdude-6.3: writing output file "test.hex"

avrdude-6.3 done.  Thank you.

However, if I try to read the application flash (my blinky program is still on there):

avrdude-6.3 -p x128a1 -C /usr/local/CrossPack-AVR/etc/avrdude.conf -c avrispmkII -P usb -U application:r:test.hex:h

avrdude-6.3: AVR device initialized and ready to accept instructions

Reading | ################################################## | 100% 0.00s

avrdude-6.3: Device signature = 0x1e974c (probably x128a1u)

avrdude-6.3: NOTE: Programmer supports page erase for Xmega devices.

             Each page will be erased before programming it, but no chip erase is performed.

             To disable page erases, specify the -D option; for a chip-erase, use the -e option.

avrdude-6.3: reading application memory:

Reading | #####                                              | 9% 0.17savrdude-6.3: stk500v2_command(): error in CMD_XPROG: Timeout

avrdude-6.3: stk600_xprog_paged_load(): XPRG_CMD_READ_MEM failed

avrdude-6.3: stk500v2_recv_mk2: error in USB receive

avrdude-6.3: usbdev_send(): wrote -107 out of 1 bytes, err = usb_bulk_write: An error occured during write (see messages above)

avrdude-6.3: stk500_send_mk2(): failed to send command to serial port

avrdude-6.3: stk500v2_recv_mk2: error in USB receive

avrdude-6.3: usbdev_send(): wrote -107 out of 1 bytes, err = usb_bulk_write: An error occured during write (see messages above)

avrdude-6.3: stk500_send_mk2(): failed to send command to serial port

avrdude-6.3: stk500v2_recv_mk2: error in USB receive

...and so on for dozens of times.

Desperate, I installed macports and got avrdude 6.3 from there, with basically the same results.

Any other clues as to what may be going on?

Thank you to anyone who can help.

CT