Maximite harkens back to the days of BASIC

maximite

Any self-identified geek that spent some time in the 80s will tell you how they used to type out programs into their 'microcomputer' with BASIC. It was a simpler time when a computer's raison d'etre was simply being a BASIC interpreter. These days are long past us now; you can't simply turn on a computer and have it load a BASIC prompt anymore. This is where [Geoff]'s Maximite single board … [Read more...]

BASIC programming on an Arduino

Basic

[Mike] sent in a project he's been working on - a port of a BASIC interpreter that fits on an Arduino. The code is meant to be a faithful port of Tiny BASIC for the 68000, and true to Tiny BASIC form, it fits in the very limited RAM of the Arduino. True to Tiny BASIC's assembler roots, [Mike]'s C port makes extensive use of the "infinitely-abusable" goto statement. Kernighan and Ritchie said … [Read more...]

Dedicated hacker adds USB capabilities to his Commodore 64

usb_basic_commodore_64

To say that Commodore 64 aficionados are a dedicated group would be quite the understatement. There are still quite a few individuals that spend all sorts of time building and programming for the C64 in order to make using them enjoyable, and to keep up to date with current technologies. [Luigi] is one of these people. He wanted a way to easily transfer files between his PC and his C64 that was … [Read more...]

Build a standalone BASIC interpreter

maximite-basic-interpreter

Here's a photo of the circuit board for the Maximite, a BASIC interpreter that [Geoff] built. The design idea was sparked when he was exploring the possibilities of the PIC32 family of chips. [Geoff] wanted to write about the hardware for a magazine article but needed an actual product to really show it off. The design can utilize one of two microprocessors, a PIC 32MX795F512H or 32MX695F512H. … [Read more...]

RFID smart card reader

rfid

[Navic] wrote in to show us his latest project. This is a portable smart card reader with a nice LCD display. he just happened to have a Basic Stamp 2px, smart card reader, and smart card reader/writer sitting around waiting to be used. What better use than a hand held smart card reader?  Tossing the bits together in a nice project enclosure, [Navic] scoured the code available to him and pieced … [Read more...]

Introductions: 3 new writers

12

We would like to introduce our new writers [Rachel Fee], [Greg Jacobs], and [Jacob Nahin]. They will be focusing on software reviews and tutorials in response to the daily requests for posts that don't require that you be an electrical engineer to understand. The Hack a Day community is growing very fast and we are happy to be a valued source of information to our readers. … [Read more...]

Wiimote controlled Hexapods

The Phoenix is a very impressive hexapod robot platform. It has 18 servos which gives each leg 3 degrees of freedom and a BasicAtom Pro 28 for the brains. Interestingly, the design started as a personal project of a forum member on the Lynxmotion forums. It turned out so well, it has become an actual product. We've seen videos of these before and they always have some pretty fluid and organic … [Read more...]