Self made ATMega32U4 board first programming

Question

I'm stepping into Arduino world and decided to build a small board to implement a gamepad. Prior designing the board I tested my firmware on a Arduino Pro Micro USB so I decided to make something similar. My board use an ATMEGA32U4-AU instead ATMEGA32U4-MU because it's simpler to solder. Connecting the board to my PC I noticed a new device named ATmega32U4 appear between Windows devices this sounds like the board is working. Now the problem is how to program it with the correct bootloader (?) and make it a real Arduino board. I found some spurious articles about how to make it but I have not a clean idea. Someone can help me? I can share everything you need to focus on the board.

UPDATE ---------------------------------------------------------------------

Before installing Arduino bootloader I tried programming a sample firmware on the board trough Atmel FLIP (successfully). After that I never been able to program the board again (neither trough FLIP or other means)

I connected my board to Arduino ISP and since Windows seems unable to find the correct driver I had to install it manually, after that I tried to install the bootloader trough Install bootloader option of Arduino IDE (selecting Arduino ISP as programmer) but I had no success: This's the log:

avrdude: Version 6.3-20190619
 Copyright (c) 2000-2005 Brian Dean, http://www.bdmicro.com/
 Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Joerg Wunsch
 System wide configuration file is "C:\Users\tux\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\arduino\tools\avrdude6円.3.0-arduino17/etc/avrdude.conf"
 Using Port : usb
 Using Programmer : arduinoisp
avrdude: usbdev_open(): Found USBtinyISP, bus:device: bus-0:\\.\libusb0-0001--0x2341-0x0049
 AVR Part : ATmega32U4
 Chip Erase delay : 9000 us
 PAGEL : PD7
 BS2 : PA0
 RESET disposition : dedicated
 RETRY pulse : SCK
 serial program mode : yes
 parallel program mode : yes
 Timeout : 200
 StabDelay : 100
 CmdexeDelay : 25
 SyncLoops : 32
 ByteDelay : 0
 PollIndex : 3
 PollValue : 0x53
 Memory Detail :
 Block Poll Page Polled
 Memory Type Mode Delay Size Indx Paged Size Size #Pages MinW MaxW ReadBack
 ----------- ---- ----- ----- ---- ------ ------ ---- ------ ----- ----- ---------
 eeprom 65 20 4 0 no 1024 4 0 9000 9000 0x00 0x00
 flash 65 6 128 0 yes 32768 128 256 4500 4500 0x00 0x00
 lfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 9000 9000 0x00 0x00
 hfuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 9000 9000 0x00 0x00
 efuse 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 9000 9000 0x00 0x00
 lock 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 9000 9000 0x00 0x00
 calibration 0 0 0 0 no 1 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
 signature 0 0 0 0 no 3 0 0 0 0 0x00 0x00
 Programmer Type : USBtiny
 Description : Arduino ISP Programmer
avrdude: programmer operation not supported
avrdude: Using SCK period of 10 usec
avrdude: initialization failed, rc=-1
 Double check connections and try again, or use -F to override
 this check.
avrdude done. Thank you.
Error during bootloader writing.

---

I can clearly see that my firmware is not running when I start the booloader process (probably because it reset the board). From the log it seems that everything is going correctly until: programmer operation not supported

What does it means? Is the programmer unable to program such chip? How can I fix this? If I reset my board prior trying to burn again a new firmware over it will it work or I just have to put a brand new micro on it?

Best regards, Mike

• Majenko: Sounds like you're in DFU programming mode. There's an app for that.
• weirdgyn: You mean this: microchip.com/developmenttools/ProductDetails/… ?
• Majenko: Looks like it. I never use it, so don't know for sure, but it certainly rings a bell.
• weirdgyn: I don't think it can be used to replace a bootloader probably I can use it to program flash with a Arduino hex.
• Gerben: You could use a different Arduino with the ArduinoAsISP sketch, and burn the bootloader (and fuses) using the ISP pins on the ATMega32u4

Answer 1

The problem was a wrong MISO connection given by a bugged ATMega32U4 footprint.