Maxtek, Inc.
Location: Torrance, CA
History
Maxtek, Inc. was the USA & Canada manufacturing licencee for Micronex PIXELPLOTTER graphics products created by Micronex Systems Group based in England. It appears Maxtek offered a subset of the products offered by Micronex, probably due to the difference in popularity of computer systems in Europe vs. the USA. From what I could find, it appears that the company began in 1981 if not earlier, and may have gone out of business in 1982 or 1983.
H/Z89 Hardware
Maxtek PixelPlotter, also referred to as the XCEL Graphics Unit, offered high resolution pixel graphics, 512 x 240 (or 256 when used with 50 Hz power i.e. in Europe). $895
Although a Micronex magazine ad mentions the PixelPlotter was also available for the Z-19 terminal, I found no evidence of Maxtek advertising it for the Z-19. In fact, the manual I have for the installation, clearly requires the H/Z-89 CPU board for operation.
Software Products
Symbol Generator - Subroutines to generate characters and strings with bold face and 90 degree rotation options, circles, arcs, vectors. rectangles, area fills with reverse video option, callable from your programs. $175
Graph Plotter - Choice of four representations (line, histogram, bar graph, and scatter plot) with automatic annotation of axis and automatic scaling that allows any number of functions to be displayed on one set of axis, callable from your programs. $175
3D Generator - User accessible routines for creation, editing, and viewing "wire-frame" objects from any angle and in any orientation with scaling "zoom" and a graphics editor. $345
Surface Plotter - True perspective view with full hidden line removal of curved surfaces in perspective from a user defined viewpoint, callable from your programs. $395
Graphics Terminal - Emulates a subset of the Tektronix 4010 series Graphics Terminal functions. Simple menu-driven keyboard commands for configuration and dot-dash and erase mode vectors. $395
Screen Printer - Sends graphic images from PixelPlotter to supported printers.
Ads
Personnel
Charles J. Fanning (Unknown position)
Janet Diem (Marketing)
Current Status: closed
