Mattel Aquarius Homecomputer system

<BODY> <SCRIPT LANGUAGE="JavaScript">  </SCRIPT> <p> <a name=intro><H1>Intro</h1></a> Hi! My name is Martin v.d. Steenoven and welcome to my website, dedicated to the Mattel / Radofin Electronics Aquarius. I have bought the Aquarius computer somewhere in 1985. The system was distributed in the Netherlands by Dunnet, who also provided a nicely translated (dutch) guide. The Aquarius was sold in several stores and good available. Even my next-door neighbour owned an Aquarius. In my quest in gathering more information and getting in touch with other Aquarius-users I joined the Hobby Computer Club (HCC). The HCC had several different usergroups and the Aquarius group was one of them. Unfortunattely it died an early death. But another usergroup rised: The Aquarius users, maintained by van Balen uitgeverij. I joined in when the group was already in progress but was able to get some technical information, hardware, software and other stuff from this group.<br> This site contains information on the Mattel Aquarius homecomputer and the emulators that have been written for this vintage computer. Lots of links to other pages (like the Virtual Aquarius Emulator), Games & binary rom images can no longer be downloaded (games in CAQ or WAV format). And if you've got some Mattel Aquarius stuff to trade than take a look at my vintage collection in the inventory section, as the system is a hot item for many traders, collectors and retrocomputer fanatics. </p> <p> <a name=news><h1>News</h1></a> (Check out my <a href=nav_inventory.html target="nav">inventory page</a>) <li>October 2006 - Bought 4 Color Aquarius printer/plotter on eBay auction</li> <li>September 2006 - Bought Kronos European Aquarius on eBay auction</li> </p> <p> <a name=history><H1>History</h1></a> <p>The Mattel Aquarius was the first and only genuine home computer offered by Mattel Electronics. Mattel did not start by designing a computer. It instead began by looking around for a pre-made computer system it could market under its name. It discovered that one of its manufacturing partners, the Hong Kong based Radofin Electronics Far East, had already designed a three-system line of home computers. All Mattel had to do was secure the U.S. marketing rights, which it promptly did for the first two units in the line, and have Radofin handle the manufacturing.</p> <p>The simplest unit, originally code-named "Checkers" and which was eventually named the Aquarius (Model #5931), did have some good things going for it. The 13.5 x 6 x 2 inch unit was equipped with the same Z-80A microprocessor used in many other home and business computers of the era; it had built-in BASIC, being a subset of full Microsoft BASIC; it had the ability to utilize cartridge-based games and other software; and, it had a color video display (16 foreground and 16 background colors, with 40 character x 24 line text). But it also featured a mere 4K of RAM (along with its 8K of ROM) with only about 1.7K free for BASIC programs, a "chicklet" keyboard with just 48 keys and a reset button, a one-voice tone generator for sound, no programmable graphics, no sprites, no game controllers, no monitor port (it attached to a TV only), a non-standard printer interface, ordinary cassette access at 600 baud, and no expansion capability except for what could be plugged into the cartridge port. Given that the unit was introduced in 1983, these features did not make it strongly competitive in the home computer market.</p> <p>In its defense, Mattel did recognize some of the problems. Mattel added a larger character set to the original Radofin design, so that games could use character graphics. Mattel made several sizes of memory add-on cartridges. It produced a "mini-expander", which at least brought three-voice sound to the Aquarius, added two game controllers, and allowed both a memory cartridge and a program cartridge to be plugged in at the same time. And Mattel was working not only on other gizmos for the Aquarius (such as a larger expander which would allow disk drives), but also on the intended successor unit, originally code-named "Chess" and called publicly the Aquarius II (Model #4000), which would have had more memory, a full stroke keyboard, and hi-res graphics capability (character resolution of 320x196). However, the initial failure of the Aquarius was such that it was discontinued almost as soon as it hit store shelves ("One of the shortest lifespans of any computer", per the April '85 issue of COMPUTE! magazine). Hardware development stopped within Mattel Electronics in mid-1983, and that company was shut down at the beginning of 1984 and Radofin was paid to take the Aquarius marketing rights back. </p> <SCRIPT>  </SCRIPT> </BODY>