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Mattel Aquarius

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paul.brett

Experienced Member
Joined
Jun 20, 2007
Messages
376
Location
Wisbech, CAMBRIDGESHIRE, UK
Hello all,

I just took delivery of the Mattel Aquarius that I purchased on Ebay about a week ago. I got it cheap, as the listing had a spelling mistake (mattel aqurious anyone?)

I've got to say, that although the keyboard is pretty similar to the Sinclair Spectrum, it 'feels' more sturdy, and the RF output from this 25 year old unit is 'stunning' to say the least.

Another fine additional to my Computer Museum.

TTFN.

Paul.
 
What in the world is wrong with the PCjr keyboard? I thought it was awesome unless I have some newer type.

Wow. hm.. I don't remember my IR keyboard on the jr looking like that.. now I need to go double check ;o)

But yes, any system with a membrane keyboard will usually get slammed. I bought an Atari 400 recently which natively comes with the membrane keyboard. When I was looking at the unit (it was in the box) I pulled it out and was thinking to myself "I thought the 400 looked a lot different than the 800" and didn't realize until I opened an additional box that was crammed in there that this person had purchased a replacement keyboard kit.. so my 400 has a hard keyboard and the old keyboard is in a box.

Anyway, sorry to drive the conversation another direction. The Aquarius is a neat little system, yes the keyboard kinda sucks unless you're young or new and don't have any typing speed to worry about.

- John
 
Hi Paul,

A good addtion to the collection.

What's the RAM in the machine and did you get any software with it. You implied these units usually sought after? Is it scarcity or notority though?
 
The Mattel Aquarius is considered quite uncommon, but I don't think it is W@W L@@K R4RE judging by the low but relatively flowing amount of machines for sale on eBay from time to time. Perhaps the Aquarius 2 is harder to get than the first version, and if you require a very nice, boxed unit or nothing, it will increase your challenge.

Furthermore, I think it even was a Mattel engineer who said it was a home computer of the 1970's made in 1983, so in many terms greatly outdated at is arrival. It is far from the only home computer to suffer from this. Had Mattel held their horses just a little and jumped on the MSX bandwagon with a Radofin design, things could have looked different. Together with Spectravideo, they both might've made a real impact on the US home computer market? After all, the Aquarius also has a Z80.
 
carlsson said:
....After all, the Aquarius also has a Z80.
Click to expand...

I must admit to having a soft spot for the Z80. My first computer had one. From what I read it seemed to be a fast, versitile chip for the day. I wonder why it was never used much for colour and sound home/game computers in North America? These seem to be dominated by the 6502 and Motorolla derivitives.
 
With the exception of the TRS-80 of course, but it is not a home computer full of colour and sound (the TRS-80 CoCo uses a 6809, before anyone asks). Perhaps the Z80 was considered a little too cheap with few support chips.

Also, traditionally the North American computer market has been considered a premium one, where people generally are more willing to pay for high quality than e.g. Europe or Asia. Thus Commodore, Atari, Apple and so on didn't have to "apologize" for building more expensive 6502 computers with real keyboards, special integrated circuits for input and output, vast expansion possibilities and so on.

On the other hand, if you like the Z80 there should be a lot of Japanese and also European computers to pick from. Both MSX compatible ones and independent ones. Personally I'm a little mesmerized about the CreatiVision / Salora Manager (in Finland), which to my knowledge is one of few 6502 systems with the same kind of off-the-shelf graphics and sound chips as a wide array of Z80 systems had.
 
tezza said:
I must admit to having a soft spot for the Z80. My first computer had one. From what I read it seemed to be a fast, versitile chip for the day. I wonder why it was never used much for colour and sound home/game computers in North America? These seem to be dominated by the 6502 and Motorolla derivitives.
Click to expand...

The Gameboy & Sega Genesis used a Z80, but I guess that'd be about 8-10 years off the conversation...
 
Mattel Aquarius

tezza said:
Hi Paul,

A good addition to the collection.

What's the RAM in the machine and did you get any software with it. You implied these units usually sought after? Is it scarcity or notority though?
Click to expand...

It is the unexpanded base model with 4KB I think. It came with 1 game cartridge "Astroblast".

I got it mainly because of the relative rarity and because it went for such a low price. (To be honest I put in an initial lowest possible bid, meaning to go back later, and put in a proper bid. I then lost track of time, but somehow managed to win the auction anyway.)

Now I need to concentrate on snagging a good Oric-1.
 
Uh, doesn't the Genesis (Megadrive) use a 68000, at least as the main CPU? Perhaps it has a Z80 co-processor for playing Master System games and/or support to the sound chips. The ColecoVision, Bandai SuperVision 8000 and a few other early video games though are Z80 creations.
 
carlsson said:
Uh, doesn't the Genesis (Megadrive) use a 68000, at least as the main CPU? Perhaps it has a Z80 co-processor for playing Master System games and/or support to the sound chips. The ColecoVision, Bandai SuperVision 8000 and a few other early video games though are Z80 creations.
Click to expand...

It's actually dedicated to sound IIRC, but as I said, probably a 10year offset from being considered used in US households at the time cheap home computers roamed the earth...:p
 
I've also recently aquired an Aquarius.

Yes, it is certainly underwhelming when I compare it to others that were around in 1983, such as the Commodore 64 and the Atari 800XL. More like a toy really. Presumably though they were much cheaper than these two.

In fairness it probably isn't too different from the ZX-Spectrum released in the UK in 1982. Both had rubber keys. However, the speccy models had at least 16k of RAM (usually 48k), even though I find the multi-use key user interface HORRIBLE to use. I sometimes wonder how the Spectrum ever got so successful? Must have just captured the British imagination somehow, or being priced just right. Or both?

Actually for learning the basics of BASIC the Aquarius user manual isn't too bad.

The manual is dated 1982, although everything I've read about the machine says it was released in 1983 after a delay? A delay getting your model into the home computer market at that time was fatal as specs. were shooting up fast and prices plummeting. For manufacturers it was war!
 
I'm afraid the Aquarius was not dirt cheap. The ZX Spectrum was, at least within the UK. Sinclair were eager to cut the ZX Spectrum 16K to £99 for Christmas 1983, in order to kill as much competition as possible. Also the Sinclair is fully bitmapped as well as having user-defined graphics, something I'm unsure whether the Aquarius can master without extra expansion.
 
The Aquarius has no graphics capabilities besides the predefined character set, which contains some "graphics".

And it isn't all that rare, at least not in the U.S (NTSC-version). The european (PAL) version is a bit rarer.

But I'm quite fond of my Aquarius. Now I just need to find me a Aquarius 2!

// Z
 
So there, Tezza got a good answer why one computer became a smash hit and one became something of a laughing stock. Such small details as allocating RAM for own graphics (if the hardware supports this) could make all the difference between success and failure, at least if the computer was aimed for gaming. As I posted above, it would've been much more interesting if Mattel had come across the MSX concept instead of obtaining the rights for Radofin's technically so-so design.
 
Zeela said:
The Aquarius has no graphics capabilities besides the predefined character set, which contains some "graphics".

And it isn't all that rare, at least not in the U.S (NTSC-version). The european (PAL) version is a bit rarer.
Click to expand...

Yes, that is indeed a serious deficiency. It harkens back to the Commodore Pet a few years before.

I do have the PAL version. My main reason for getting hold of it though was not scarcity but because it has a place in history for being notoriously bad. And now that I've played with it, I have to agree. I mean, 1.7k available after initialising BASIC. In 1983!? What were they thinking!!??

(I suspect there was method in the madness. Perhaps they had a whopping markup on expansion cartridges which people HAD to buy to do anything remotely useful!?).
 
And the PET never was meant as a home computer... In that respect, the COMX-35, another ill-fated latecomer on the market seems superior as it seems to support at least a few user definable characters. Exactly how many or how flexible, I haven't checked yet.
 
The Aquarius is most definitely not rare in the US, with regular eBay availability and low pricing. I have a complete collection with four systems, one of them being the Radofin version after the rights reverted back to them once Mattel pulled out of the market. As a child, I remember the system being on the market for a very short time before it made it to closeout stores in various bundles. In the closeout stores I remember it being fairly cheap - sub-$100 even with the printer and other items in the box - but it's correct to say that the US was never price conscious in regards to computers, other than for the C-64, which became a tremendous value, but also competitively powered with anything on the market at the time. The Timex Sinclair 1000 DID initially move lots of units here precisely because it was cheap, but it didn't last long before people caught on to how pathetic the thing really was.

I think it's also a factor along the same lines how here in the US we standardized on disks far quicker than Europe did, which stuck with tapes for quite some time. By as early as 1984, I'd say the market for software on cassette was pretty tiny here, which was no doubt a factor in the demise of a lot of systems that failed to release more robust storage solutions in time.
 
Aqaurius is quite rare in the UK, odd ones appear on ebay now and again. Software is alot rarer than the machine.

I've got one with 16k memory expansion, and only one software cartridge !

The spectrum did so well here in the UK, because it was so cheap, and the software was so readily available, literally thousand of titles available, main competition was the Commodore 64, most other machines had a short existance !
 
And if you look carefully at the US listings for them, most of the ones that do show up are the Radofin version. That one was a staple issue item at time-share open house events for several years, which also explains why so many of them are still in their boxes. . .the people who were gifted with them never even tried to use them.

As to memory, the 4K memory expansion cartridge is pretty common, the 8K version much less so--but still easy to find if you look long enough, and the 16K version is really hard to find. Most of the game cartridges are not too hard to find either, it just requires a bit of patience to find them all. One note: a huge number of the Aquarius LOGO cartridges showed up from a warehouse somewhere a couple of years back, so that one often shows up in case lots of six on eBay.
 
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