I decided to program an ATTiny 85 using Waveshare's RP2040 Zero, which is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 chip.
I feel so pumped up I decided to rant about it here before the euphoria dies down.
I didn't stumble upon any tutorial or video online on how to do it this way, so I did it anyway.
But not too fast...I had to craft a minimal ISP sketch and almost felt like jumping off the roof. Bare metal programming and other stories, lol.
"But why?" you might ask.
I plan to build something that I'd call a prototype of an unmanned ground combat vehicle -- but right now, just a chassis that allows manual override via radio control. I want to test the concept with what I have before blowing money I don't have.
I want to use as few resources as possible for this concept to stretch my creativity, and I've settled on the ATTiny as the "brain" of the receiver unit.
I'll then repurpose the RP2040 Zero as the brain of the transmitter after I've used it to program the ATTiny 85.
Oh, and I won't use Microchip Studio for this one.
I'll try to share what I do here as much as I can so you can 'steal' from me, roast me, or whatever :-)