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Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : The Maximite should be fun.
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Geoffg Guru  Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3194 |
There has been a lot written in this forum about my intentions for the Maximite, if it is "open source" or not, and so on. I am sure that everyone is sick and tired of this subject but figured that I should at least put my views on the table. From the beginning I designed the Maximite and wrote MMBasic for fun and only for fun. Silicon Chip pay a small amount for each article and I do not get any other sort of payment from anyone else. My only "payback" is the fun I had in creating the Maximite and the gratification of seeing people using it and also having fun with it. It is important to recognise the amount of work that has gone into MMBasic and the Maximite. The code now stands at about 30,000 lines. Writing, modifying and supporting that code (and the Maximite) has dominated the last 18 months of my life and I guess that I have put the equivalent of 10 months of full time work into the project. And, if I say so myself, the result has been pretty good. For one person (working from his spare bedroom) the code is remarkably bug free, complete and well documented. The thanks from the hundreds of Maximite users has been the reward. Unfortunately, the fun times seem to be coming to an end. Anyone who has read this forum will have seen the many negative postings aimed at me and the Maximite in general. They are careful to not directly attack me but the barbs sink in deep regardless. The result is that the Maximite world is splitting into two worlds. Honestly, I cannot see what I can do to prevent this. Up to date I have tried to ignore them but the negativity is relentless and dispiriting. My problem is that it is hard to keep reading this forum and adsorbing this stuff, so I have come to the conclusion that my only choice is drop out completely. This absence might appear arrogant and I apologise in advance but, it is certainly better than trying to defend myself here. This does not mean that I have abandoned MMBasic or the Maximite. MMBasic Version 3.0 will be ready in a few days and there is even a colour Maximite in the distant future. If you want to contact me please feel free to do so via email at projects@geoffg.net. I get a lot of emails but I try to answer each one personally. Thanks to my many supporters here and if anyone wants to start up a new forum (without the negative attacks) please let me know and I will be happy to contribute. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
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Gizmo Admin Group  Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Look I agree with your Geoff. As someone who also develops software ( though not to the extent as yourself ) I know the problems that can be caused when you end up with more than one version of your original chunk of code. It is very hard to keep it under control and the whole thing turns into a mess. Now I like the idea of the Duinomite, it brings a whole new group of hobbyists into play, and adds a few cool features to the Maximite. But I do think the Duinomite followers should appreciate the work invested and interest in the original Maximite. MMBasic is Geoff's little baby, and it's designed to run on a Maximite. I agree some of the comments directed to Geoff are unfair, considering he's created this thing in his own spare time. Demanding him to release the source code before he's ready to do so is just not on. If a Maximite firmware update is released, and you have a Duinomite, then remember your hardware is not the standard ( not that thats a bad thing ), so you will have to wait for the source code to be released and ported to your hardware. If that takes a few months, then so be it. I also think some of the comments directed to the Duinomite followers are also unfair. I would like to see an end to the negative comments from both camps. 90% of the posts here are great, informative and helpful. But it only takes a few negative posts to bring everyone down, and its the reason many old members dont bother posting anymore. Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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pcaffalldavis Senior Member  Joined: 17/10/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 187 |
Thank you Geoff. You have done a wonderful thing. I look forward to the day, forum and place where the MM again brings only pleasure and fun. And if everyone would slow down just a bit with the rush for further development it might relieve a lot of pressure on developers and give us all time to focus on, work with, and enjoy what we already have. Viva la MaxiMite Geoff! Thank you very much for all your efforts. Let me know if a new MM happy place forum is started. Pete in Hyder We're all here 'cause we're not all there. |
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wizard Newbie  Joined: 29/07/2011 Location: United StatesPosts: 38 |
Hi Geoff and all, I too agree that Maximite should be fun. I am amazed at how fun and useful Maximite is:). I myself don't try to answer all my e-mails, it is just too much work especially when the angry people of the world vent on me! So I have a more than one e-mail address. It will probably come as no surprise that it has been years since I turned on a television or radio set. This also helps to slow down the negative input I get. I really enjoy playing with technology. And I am sure most of the regular readers and contributors here do too! Maximite is a GREAT toy! My highest compliments to you Geoff. Keep up the great work! I hope all of us Maximite supporters have a content, happy and low stress new year. Warm regards, Wiz |
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darthmite Senior Member Joined: 20/11/2011 Location: FrancePosts: 240 |
Criticism is easy ... This is bad , you can do that better etc ... But here , only one got the ability to push me back in the 80's when i started with the ZX81 !! That is you Geoff with the MM. It's simple , easy and FUN ! Thank you for this and continue your great work with the MM [;)] Cheer. Theory is when we know everything but nothing work ... Practice is when everything work but no one know why ;) |
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| aargee Senior Member Joined: 21/08/2008 Location: AustraliaPosts: 255 |
I agree fully with Geoff's comments. I really quite like the Maximite and I'm inspired by Geoff's whole ethos behind his Maximite. I also want to congratulate Glenn for making this forum available from the beginning, I realise how difficult his job must be regarding judging allowable content. For a long time I have watched posts here and often bitten my tongue, or started to write a response then deleted it, not wanting to stir the hornets nest any further. I felt the forum should have been purely for the technical ideas and support for the Maximite (and Picaxe and other micro-controllers - but I haven't seen a lot of those represented of late  ). I really was a bit unsettled seeing the bandwagon hopping on for, it seemed, commercial gain that started to happen and openly advertised via reams of posts.
But hey, that's just me. It's Geoff's intellectual property, Glenn's forum and it's all open source. I was not really surprised that Geoff sat on the source code for 2.7b, I probably wouldn't have lasted as long. I find that I'm starting to feel less inclined to read this part of the forum and even contribute. I do really quite like many of the other forums here, as I do have an interest in alternative energy. If Geoff manages to become part of another, more moderated technical forum to support the MM, then I will follow him there and leave Maximites, Picaxes and other micro controllers behind to all its wrangling. - Rob. For crying out loud, all I wanted to do was flash this blasted LED. |
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| rhamer Senior Member Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 174 |
So it's unfair to criticise here, but posting inflammatory remarks on your own web site where there is no right of reply is fair game? http://geoffg.net/DuinoMite.html I don't want to argue either, but exactly what have the DM folks done to deserve such open condemnation? They took an open source project and made their own version, how is that in any way wrong? Rohan Rohan Hamer HAMFIELD Software & Hardware Solutions Makers of the Maximite Expander. http://www.hamfield.com.au |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
Yeah I didn't like that page much either Rohan. I could understand Geoff's point of view, but think it went a little to far, especially the cartoon graphics. I'm sure Geoff has received a few emails condemning that page, including mine. I do think maybe Geoff should have spent more time on the forum in the early days so he could share a vision of where he see's the Maximite heading. But at the time I know Geoff was away on holidays and not able to participate as much as I would have liked. Also the Maximite was on serious back order thanks to Altronics, we had people desperate to get their hands on a Maximite. So naturally others have stepped up, supplied alternative Maximites and developed the Maximite into new directions. Again I will say I think both the Maximite and DuinoMite are great, and have a strong future. I cant see any reason they can not live side by side. They are after all mostly compatible with each other, but different in ways that make it interesting. I dont think a new forum will help the situation. The problem isn't the forum, its the people. Put simply, its easy to misunderstand someone else's words when you can not see their facial expressions. Its a big problem with the internet, forums, and the reason many forum owners wish they had never started a forum in the first place. Without the face to face we need to be careful what we say, think before posting, and understand that we ourselves may be the problem, it's us who miss understood the other persons words. This is always a good laugh. how-to-behave-on-an-internet-forum Glenn The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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| ajkw Senior Member Joined: 29/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 290 |
Hooray. Like aargee (Rob) I have also long stayed silent. Some of the things written that have been directed at Geoff by those who are developing a 'alternative' commercial interest based on his free idea and hard work have been terrible. Many factors come into where I may spend any future $ on this hobby. I am glad Geoff has had fun developing the Maximite, I have had fun using it and also had fun in helping with it's development in the small way I have (A couple of bug reports and suggestions). I am a MM person not DM. The DM people just need to get on with their own development now that they have forked it. They are responsible for it's development from here, no one else. It is different in its intention, it is different in its hardware design and implementation, the firmware is forked therefore no longer relies on the original. Anthony. |
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donmck Guru Joined: 09/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 1313 |
As the DuinoMite concept was my idea, and I gathered the DuinoMite team together one by one, I feel I should be the person making a response to Geoff's post. If it wasn't for Geoff Graham, and the MaxiMite, not one of us would be reading this message, or this forum group. Each and every one of us loves the MaxiMite, with perhaps the exception of some recent newcomers that jumped in on the DuinoMite end of things, and were not even aware of the MaxiMite. However these people will become aware, as every time they switch on the DuinoMite, Geoff's name is there. If they want to recompile the code, Geoff's name is there too. In fact I insist that his name appears on all possible areas, perhaps with the exception of the DuinoMite boards, as I have given up trying to understand if Geoff wants it there or not, so I have left that up to Tsvetan at Olimex. Glenn, The Back Shed Forum owner and moderator, has been very kind to all groups, and has tried extremely hard to make it all work out. I asked Glenn to split it into two groups, but for his own reasons, he wasn't prepared to. I then asked for the (MM-DM) header for all messages, and Glenn agreed to this. If you read his rules and regs. about postings, I wrote most of that text and Glenn edited it to suit his board. I took the idea from Piclist.com. About the same time, Ken Segler was toying with a DuinoMite specific Forum, so I asked him with a pretty please, to go ahead with it. He did so, however we picked up a member that was banned from this forum, and in my opinion, was destroying any progress that the KSD forum was making. I didn't want to spend an hour or two putting an interesting post together, just to have it trampled on with gibberish, quickly followed up by another 6 messages by the same member with the same gibberish. I then created my own emergency backup forum at: http://dontronics.websitetoolbox.com/ which I was, and still am prepared to operate as either a MaxiMite Forum, a DuinoMite Forum, or both if needed. As of today, the member problem has actually sorted itself out, so hopefully the KSD forum can now move ahead. I also split up TheMaximiteComputer.com blog into a new http://www.DuinoMite.com blog, as Geoff had dropped his link to TheMaximiteComputer.com, even though I had heaps of MaxiMite specific data on it, such as compatible keyboards, SD cards, etc. Basic files, even the wish lists. I did this for Geoff's benefit, but got very little feed back, if any from him. I'm sure he will correct me if I am wrong. But none of this is helping The Back Shed forum. The MaxiMite was here first, with Geoff Graham supporting it, and there is no reason for this group to shift. If anybody needs to shift, it has to be the DuinoMite group. The problem isn't source code as many people think, it is about hardware. We went and changed the schematic. Yes, that is our crime. We changed the schematic. Many of the things that Geoff said in his attack on the DuinoMite were very true. We didn't have a manual. I was silly and thought if it was 100% software compatible, why do we need a manual? Sure we needed to cover the hardware differences, and how to control these differences with MM-Basic. Tsvetan with Mick's help, took on this mammoth task, and created a PDF manual that sits at around 230 pages now, and is growing daily. I'll say this a nicely as I can. Geoff Graham has been very awkward for me and many others to deal with. I thought I gave him everything he ever asked for. It appears I didn't give enough. I am hoping I can add another solution that may stop this split between the two groups. The software development team is prepared to take the current MaxiMite source (wherever it is up to), and integrate it with the DuinoMite source, and compile both a MaxiMite and DuinoMite hex file output. This means Geoff doesn't have to do anything extra, apart from what he loves doing. I would hope that this can be seen as both groups now working together for a common cause, and not working against each other. Is this possible? There isn't one person on the DuinoMite team, that doesn't support the pure MaxiMite group on a daily basis. Our DuinoMite software team is now doing MaxiMite patches for individuals. How silly is that? Cheers Don... https://www.dontronics.com |
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| Gizmo Admin Group Joined: 05/06/2004 Location: AustraliaPosts: 5078 |
I'm going to close this thread now. Geoff has said his bit and had a few replies from both sides. Any further posts are not needed. I would like to see both camps get along, quite frankly there is no reason they couldn't. The Duinomite is a natural offspring of the Maximite, it was bound to happen. Yes it may have commercial interests for some forum members, but money makes the world go round, do you think Altronics would have given the original Maximite's away for free? This thread is just a bump in th road as far as I'm concerned. I would like to see Geoff pop in and post more often to support his creation, after all, this section of the forum was set up for to provide Maximite support, and we all appreciate what he has given us. Glenn PS. Actually after I posted this I noticed Don had posted his well worded reply above. I'll still close it, but Don or Geoff if you feel I should to reopen it send me a message. The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, the second best time is right now. JAQ |
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