Microchip
An integrated circuit or monolithic integrated circuit (also referred to as an IC, a chip, or a microchip) is a set of electronic circuits on one small flat piece (or "chip") of semiconductor material, usually silicon. Large numbers of tiny M ...
PIC32 microcontroller-based
microcomputer
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PC ...
. Originally designed as a hobby kit, the Maximite was introduced in a three-part article in Silicon Chip magazine in autumn of 2011 by Australian designer Geoff Graham.
The project consists of two main components — a main circuit board and the MMBasic Interpreter, styled after
GW-BASIC
GW-BASIC is a dialect of the BASIC programming language developed by Microsoft from IBM BASICA. Functionally identical to BASICA, its BASIC interpreter is a fully self-contained executable and does not need the Cassette BASIC ROM found in the or ...
.
Versions
Maximite version 2.7 is still an
open source
Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...
project. Several hobbyists have produced their own custom versions, often using commercially available prototyping circuit boards.
Clones
Several Maximite clones were designed and released in the months following its introduction.
Some, such as the Maximite SM1, and Geoff Graham's latest version, the Mini-Maximite, are hardware- and software-compatible with the original design, but use a different form factor.
Others, like the DuinoMite, from the Bulgarian company Olimex, have altered the hardware by adding Arduino headers. This makes it easier to use hardware designed for Arduino boards, but modified firmware is needed to use this functionality. Some of these changes have been incorporated in the official version as it gets updated.
Australian Distributor Dontronics and United States programmer Ken Segler have been active in adapting the software to run on the different versions of the hardware.
Geoff Graham has also released an altered version of MMBasic for the UBW32 development Board.
Maximite clones made by US produce CircuitGizmos remain compatible with the original Maximite design and include a very smal CGMMSTICK1 that can be used with solderless breadboards, and a Colour Maximite compatibl CGCOLORMAX1
MMBasic
MMBasic 3.x has support for user defined subroutines and modern Line-numberless structure. This MMBasic 3.x has been released in several versions including support for the Olimex Duinomite, UBW32 and CGMMStick variants.
While the versions of MMBasic prior to 3.x were available as
free and open-source software
Free and open-source software (FOSS) is a term used to refer to groups of software consisting of both free software and open-source software where anyone is freely licensed to use, copy, study, and change the software in any way, and the source ...
distributed under the
GNU General Public License
The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the Four Freedoms (Free software), four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was th ...
, for the 3.x versions the license was changed to a