The Maximite/ Duinomite

[bryan1]

G'day Guy's,
Earlier this year a very talented Ozzie namely Mr. Geoff Graham http://www.geoffg.net/maximite.html released to the world via a few SiliconChip articles the Maximite. Not long after talk was starting about making this great project Arduino compatable so work began on the Duinomite. Olimex got onboard and by using the Pinguino board as a base created a new board, well 3 sizes - the mini, the Duinomite and the Duinomite Mega. Where companies were charging $80 + for the Maximite with long delays the Duinomite boards have really dropped in price making them available to a wider group of people.

**broken link removed**

Now I'm sure people will ask 'What's so special about this board', well lets take the Arduino for example:- in order to compile a program one needs a computer with all the software overhead, write the code compile it then load it in.

With the Maximite it's simply a case of writing your program, save it to the SD card then type run. Now one can use a terminal like 'putty' write the code in it then transfer it over.

Also at present there is three types of software available

MMBasic
TRS-80
Retro BSD

The Duinomite Mini




The Duinomite Board



IO board for above

**broken link removed**

The Duinomite Mega



Screenshot of the TRS-80 emulator



Screenshot of the RetroBSD Emulator



Space Invaders on the Duinomite

Now the best part about this whole project it is open source so people can modify it to suit themselves with the only catch being open source one should release any mod's so everyone can use/ build on them.



Regards Bryan

 

[Mr RB]

Good stuff! I remember the Maximite discussion here after it hit the Silicon Chip magazine.

I emailed Geoff Graham at the time with some info from my web page showing how easy it was to add RGB colour to the VGA output (only needs a few resistors), and he said he had some ideas too for adding colour. It would be great if he has added the colour to it, that was the one big failing of an otherwise very cool product.

 

[ElectroMaster]

Hi Bryan,

Wow, this does look like a alternative to the Arduino. I really like the simplistic way to develop and load the code to the device.

I want one!

-EM

 

[bryan1]

Hi Guy's,
Cool the Duinomite turned up today so rushin to get all the jobbies out the way then off to the shed to hook it up have a play.....

Cheers Bryan

 

[bryan1]

G'day Guy's,
Well got to have a bit of a play up in the shed yesterday with it and got the VGA and keyboard hooked up and working nicely. Last night I brought it down to the house and just had a USB cable connected to it and I was using it via Tera Term and it worked great.

Geoff has provided the full schematic's on his website and it can be homemade easily too on a minimalist board, so for an embedded project all one would need to do is load up the chip via a serial terminal with your program then it's all set to go.

Regards Bryan