Good news everyone!
I just uploaded 'hello world' to my Axon2 and it said hi back to me
I'm ecstatic about this because i've had my Axon2 since 2011 but have always had so much trouble with it I could never get anything going. Just so much fuss with bootloaders and needing 32 bit, ugh! I have tried countless times previous, to no avail. It just wasn't as easy as the BASIC Stamp or Arduino for me.
Well some time has passed, Im a much better programmer (and perhaps a much better instruction follower) and I finally got it working! So psyched!
How'd I do it? (Just in case there's someone out there as clueless as I was)
I'm on a mac now, which brought it's own challenges - but it worked out in the end. To get around the bootloader & 32 bit windows require I bought a Pololu hardware programmer. I decided to listen to the experts here and now I'm using Webbotlib to make my files. Then, I use avrdude to push them over onto the Axon2 (thankfully crosspack makes it not too hard to setup avrdude on mac).
Anywho, just wanted to post. I'm super psyched to have gotten my dev environment setup here for the Axon2 and am looking forward to many projects in the future with it!
Take care all,
Joe