TheBackShed.com

Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : The Maximite/Micromite/Armmite/Pi-cromite Story

Author

Message

panky

Guru

Joined: 02/10/2012
Location: Australia
Posts: 1116

Posted: 03:41am 01 Aug 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Print this post

For those of you that a relatively new to the the Maximite and MMBasic through the recent announcement of the Colour Maximite 2, I strongly recommend you take the time to understand the history and development of this (and it's siblings) wonderful project.

The Maximite story is Geoff Grahams and can be found here

Following on from the Maximite was the developement of the Micromite series, also detailed by Geoff here

A slightly off-course

exercise by Geoff resulted in MMBasic for DOS which implimented the basic (sic!) interpreter without the graphics and I/O capabilities. If you want to understand the actual source of MMBasic, this is an excellent place to start as it is the core of the interpreter.

This was further extended by Peter Mather with support for a wide range of LCD displays from 1.3" to 8". Continuing on, Peter went on to port MMBasic to the PIC32MZ2048 chipset under the banner MMeXtreme and then to the Rasberry Pi (Pi-cromite).

Peter continued his expansion of the MMBasic "sphere" to include the ST Micro ARM Cortex M7 chips - the ST32H743, ST32L4xx and ST32F476.

All culminated into the joint project of the Colour Maximite 2.

It is also worthwhile to fully appreciate the design approach and implimentation of MMBasic to have a read through the User Manuals for the Micromite and Armmite devices.

Much of the above would not have been achieved so successfully without the input (and many, MANY

) questions from numerous members of this TheBackShed forum.

I have followed the whole series from the start and would like to express my very deepest thanks and admiration to Geoff, Peter and all the other folks involved.

Doug.

... almost all of the Maximites, the MicromMites, the MM Extremes, the ArmMites, the PicoMite and loving it!

JohnS
Guru

Joined: 18/11/2011
Location: United Kingdom
Posts: 4139

Posted: 09:27am 01 Aug 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Print this post

And in amongst, an Armmite F4 version for the STM32F407VET6.

John

JoOngle
Regular Member

Joined: 25/07/2020
Location: Sweden
Posts: 82

Posted: 09:49am 01 Aug 2020

Copy link to clipboard

Print this post

Yes, the love for this project is what drew me into it in the first place.

But as with all "non-advertised" things, I first learned about it on a big youtube channel like that 8-bit guy.

I eagerly read the story on Geoffs page when learning where to get the parts or order the finished version, I was lazy so I ordered the ready made unit :p

Ever since, I have been trying to sell the idea to all of my friends worldwide, but it's a very hard sell. They are all very impressed with the fact that the games you guys made and demos were running run-time and not ready compiled, this is what blew most of their minds, but still - it's a hard sell in a world of PC's and Steam, they just don't want another standalone unit to do their code on (and they all code).

But nevermind them, I can clearly see that this forum has SKY ROCKETED in popularity after the 8-bit guy gave you some advertisement for the thing, there's so much forum activity here now I can hardly keep up.

Also, I noticed from the picture forum tread that most of you are of age like fine wine, and well - I'm getting there, but most of my friends are half my age (we're essentially gamers, but work as coders and IT-Supporters in our day time).

Personally I love the unit because it's actually useful for me, I can easily see 100's of applications I can experiment with and make up on the fly, especially since I'm an old electronics freak, have an extensive lab and I happen to be a licensed radio amateur as well (oh the software I want to make with this).

Why not just use a PC?

Well - I'm perhaps old fashioned, but I like my units up-and-running in seconds. That's why I don't have PC-scopes, or PC-VST synthesizers etc. I mostly use standalone units like traditional oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, decoders of various communication forms via radio, and games consoles (because I like my games specialized and native). Heck - I even used to collect PCB's from Arcade machines, the fun times - oh the fun times!

CMM2 - is all of that to me, I can imagine it as accessory to everything, a Packet analyzer for Radio Comms, A multi tester for monitoring various states and things that I want to do instead of ready made equipment that does just a little of what I want to do, CMM2 fits my ideas just perfectly here.

I could go on, but you're not gonna read this much text, so I won't. Anyway thanks
for your efforts. :)

Print this page

To reply to this topic, you need to log in.