The last and final message.

To those who helped ... thank you thank you thank you. I found the problem. You see, I built my own download cable (schematic from atmel). Well it is a mass of wires sticking out of a breadboard with a 40 pin atmel chip sticking out of the middle.

I forgot ONE, that is 1 wire. It is the one that connect the caps (to kill the AC) from Vcc to gnd of all the TTL chips and the big boy itself. How I got it programmed beats the hell out of me. Well I had my girlfriend hit me in the head about 10 times ... I think. It was pretty hard and after about the 6th time I lost count. I could write a program and hook the µController to her arm so next time I can keep count.

Again thanks to all, especially Mr. Catto, the most patient one :-)

Eric