Some of the Arduino boards don't have a built-in USB adapter. In particular it seems that SparkFun sells an Arduino on a breadboard that lacks the USB and you need an external one to program it. I think the question may be referring to that style Arduino.
IIRC some loaders for other chips use RTS instead of DTR, so you may need to add a wire and pin for this. Alternately, you may need to bypass the transistor reset circuit.
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