avrdude: error: buffered memory access not supported

Question 1

Sometimes, a different USB cable will make all the difference. There is a wide range in the quality of cables on the market, and sometimes, you get one on the ragged edge of acceptable.

The Arduino lilypad seems to be particularly susceptible to this. Glad this helped.

Question 2

Press the Reset Button before upload the code, until you hear the "unplug" sound (in windows). Open the IDE and try it again

Question 3

I had the same error message trying to upload a sketch to an Arduino Leonardo board from a Levovo laptop using Arduino ver 1.0.6. Both Device Manager and Arduino showed the board connected on COM3. Arduino also gave an error message that COM3 was being used by another App. I tried changing USB cables but got the same message. What worked was changing the USB outlet from the top right rear on the Lenovo to the bottom right rear outlet. It connected on COM8 and I was able to upload the sketch. Understand there are speed differences between the two outlets. Now all I need to do is figure out why I cannot upload sketches to the same Leonardo board on my HP laptop with Windows 10 and the most recent Arduino version. Connects on COM6 but hangs up when uploading. (Note: Also had to edit some Arduino library files that worked on ver 1.0.6 but showed compile errors in the latest version.)

Question 4

I had the same error, but I later found that I had the wrong Arduino type selected, instead of Nano I had Yun.

Question 5

I had the same issue when trying to upload code into Arduino Micro ( Chinese clone ). Spending hours on Google, flashing new bootloader - still nothing. Physical reset and opening COM port with boundrate 1200 doesn't work. Why?

I HAVE ATMEGA168 INSTEAD OF ATMEGA32u4!

Google is telling, that Arduino Micro got Atmega32u4, but my clone got Atmega168! First of all, check what atmega type do you have by lookup on black soldered chip on Arduino. So instead of choose "Arduino Micro" on "Board" menu, i choose Arduino Nano and everything works!

Question 6

I get this same error, avrdude: error: buffered memory access not supported also with garbage-looking output with programmer id @ with versions ., when I point avrdude at the serial port of the stock main firmware of my Leonardo-compatible breakout board instead of the serial port offered during the bootloader; it seems that the latter is what avrdude can program?

The normal initial output when actually connecting to the bootloader would be something like:

Connecting to programmer: .
Found programmer: Id = "CATERIN"; type = S
    Software Version = 1.0; No Hardware Version given.

To get to the bootloader you can either

press the reset button (if you don't have a reset button, connecting reset to ground), or
briefly connect to the main firmware's serial port at 1200 bps and disconnect

The bootloader will present a different serial USB device than the main firmware's serial USB device, so it may get assigned a different serial port number in your OS, usually the next available one. For instance in Windows my Leonardo-compatible main firmware was assigned COM3 and the bootloader was assigned COM4.

A python script, courtesy of https://nicholaskell.wordpress.com/tag/leonardo/, for doing this serial 'knock':

reset.py:

#!/usr/bin/env python
import serial, sys
serialPort = sys.argv[1]
ser = serial.Serial(
    port=serialPort,
    baudrate=1200,
    parity=serial.PARITY_NONE,
    stopbits=serial.STOPBITS_ONE,
    bytesize=serial.EIGHTBITS
)
ser.isOpen()
ser.close() # always close port

In Windows land, I have a cmd script for using this in a virtualenv

reset.cmd:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Python37-32\Scripts\virtualenv.exe" pyreset_virtualenv
pyreset_virtualenv\Scripts\pip.exe install pyserial
pyreset_virtualenv\Scripts\python reset.py COM3
pause

adjust to suit your serial port and python path.

Either way, after getting the bootloader connected, you have a brief window of a couple of seconds where avrdude can connect to the new serial port to start programming before the bootloader will go into the main firmware again, at which point you'll have to do the reset again. So, once you figure out the bootloader serial port, you'll want to prepare the avrdude command line to run in advance, so you can launch it without delay after the reset.

Question 7

While this answer isn't specific to the lilypad, you need to reset the board to write or read from/to the memory. However, If you are using avrdude in the terminal you must send a specific baudrate(1200 for the Leonardo) then close, wait 2 seconds, and open the port. At that point you can read and write to and from your Arduino. I achieved this using python. Along the lines of:

Import serial
Import time 
Import os

Seri=serial.Serial(yourConnectedPort, specificBaudRate)
Seria.close()
time.sleep(2)
Seri.open()
os.system(your avrdude command)