avr microcontrollers

some frustration with the lack of good open source high-level language support for pics has lead me to investigate accessibility for the avr and other platforms made by atmel. apparently isp is at least as easy, judging by this parallel port programmer. other designs leave out the pull-up resistor on reset and drive it directly; some even leave out all the current-limiting resistors, leaving nothing but a homemade cable. can't get any simpler (and less safe) than that. (one note: some people use pin 18 instead of 20 and 21 on the parallel port for gnd.) plenty of designs out there for usb programmers, too, so i could use my netbook to flash an avr. but i think they all use an avr, so the 2-resistor programmer will always have its place. i couldn't find any refs on using the parallel port to power the mcu during programming, but i guess it doesn't matter since it will need power from the circuit to test/use. still need to familiarize myself with all the available options for avrs. here is the atmel product guide with feature tables, etc. apparently atmel is much more stingy with samples than microchip, so i'll just have to order some from digikey or mouser. gcc has an avr backend! it seems almost too good to be true. and there is the pymite project; still looks young but under active development. if i go far into embedded stuff, i'll eventually need to use a rtos, like freertos, to keep my code modular and simple and to give me some platform independence.