All:

For the holiday season I managed to get myself an AVR-Dragon
programmer/ICE system. Using the Dragon, I was able to
write a program in C (including fuse bits), download it
into an ATmega168 and debug it using GDB. Given that
an AVR-Dragon costs ~$50, it is one of the lowest cost
tool chains available to the entry level roboticist.
The Controler-28 Rev. D works as expected, when jumpered
for the AVR.

Installing the AVR tool chain was a bit challenging,
and there were a number of rough edges and down right
bugs in avarice (the GDB to Dragon adaptor program).

By the way, this stuff all works on Linux.

All-in-all, I highly recommend the AVR-Dragon.

-Wayne