I've received all the parts and assembled my Gen7 board. I've spend the last few days trying to figure out how to load the boot loader on an atmega1284p-pu chip. All the tutorials I have found online is for the atmega 644. I downloaded the data sheet for the 1284 and it seems that all the pins on the two chips has the same functions. so the upload of the boot loader will be done in the same manner as the tutorials for the 644?

The next step is to find the proper boot loader: If I understand all the blogs and tutorials correctly the boot loader for the Sanguino should work on the Gen7 board.

The next crucial step is to get the proper boot loader for the crystal you are using, if 16 MHz crystal is used on the bread board when you load the boot loader you must use the 16 MHz boot loader file.

Next you must load the actual firmware to the chip, Teacup or what ever. This is done via the Arduino IDE.

So this is all theory will try to get the board to work on the week end.