1. It can only be powered from USB as there is no voltage regulator or external power connector on board. Because of this the VIN connector just goes straight to VCC so definitely DO NOT connect an external voltage to this unless it is a regulated 5v.
2. There is no secondary chip to handle USB/Rs232 conversion, so the chip must be flashed with USBaspLoader firmware. This firmware emulates the USBasp in system programmer on the boot section of the chip's flash, allowing you to write to the remaining space using AVRdude, Arduino IDE or any other AVR programming software that supports the USBasp interface.
There's a Zip file on the way with all the schematics, layout etc. Just waiting to get it set up and running so I can include the pre-configured bootloader firmware.
