Is it possible to custom program AVR by putting it in the AVR socket of an Arduino?

Question

Is it possible to custom program an AVR chip by putting it in the AVR socket of an Arduino?

Answer 1

Yes. You can program a virgin AVR by connecting it up to some GPIOs and reflashing it. If you had a second Arduino, the chip being programmed would sit in the socket.

http://arduino.cc/en/Tutorial/ArduinoISP

(With the Arduino Uno, it's more complex it seems)

Can you use an Arduino Uno as an ATMega328 Programmer?

How to burn atmega328 chip via Arduino UNO as ISP?

Answer 2

If you have an Arduino with a FT232RL chip onbaord (Arduino Duemilanove or earlier models or their clones) then you can bitbang the FT232RL to program the bootloader or any other code into the AVR.

http://make.kosakalab.com/arduino/bootloader/index_en.html