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jaybird3rd

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jaybird3rd last won the day on April 29 2020

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About jaybird3rd

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  1. Thank you so much! I'm so glad that so many people have been enjoying the Aquaricart over the last 10+ years(!). It seems to have helped to generate renewed interest in the Aquarius during that time, and several Aquarius owners have shared wonderful stories about how it has added to their usage and appreciation of their systems, and I couldn't ask for more. I've had to pretty much set aside my retro computing projects these last few years, but I do (still) have a few ideas about "Volume 2." What I'd actually like to do first is complete a "code refresh" of the original Aquaricart. I'm very happy with how it turned out, but several features were added very late in its development, and there are a few little things—most of which have probably gone unnoticed by everyone other than me—that I've always wanted to go back and improve. I thought of doing this in late 2021 for the 10th anniversary, but I'm thinking now of releasing an "Aquaricart Anniversary Edition" in 2023—in time for the 40th anniversary of the Aquarius. The content would be essentially the same (so owners of the original Aquaricart needn't feel they are missing out), but it would include a new label and manual, new menu software, and a new cartridge board. These new additions would also be incorporated into "Volume 2," which would be a collection of the best third-party software originally released on cassette, modified to run entirely from the cartridge (among other possible enhancements). I'll share more details when I finally have time to get back to work on my Aquarius ... hopefully this summer, once school settles down a bit.
  2. Excellent questions both. I don't believe I ever visited the place in person; if I did, I have no memory of it (I would have been very young at the time), and my grandfather is no longer with us to ask about it. In a fast-changing place like north Jersey, I wouldn't be at all surprised if nothing remains of the original location. Too many of the other places that I remember in that area are also gone.
  3. I understand that this is a special occasion, but please do not cross-post the same message in multiple forums. (This falls under the category of "spamming" under our community guidelines.) I've moved this to "Gaming Publications and Websites," which is the best place for YouTube posts, and removed the others.
  4. Time to break out the mop, I guess! To those who insist on posting insulting and childish comments—and you know who you are—please stop it for everyone's sake or you'll get kicked out of the thread.
  5. Wow, thank you! I'm very excited to learn about this. I'm looking forward to trying it with my Framemeister!
  6. The most definitive numbers that I have are from the original Technical Specification from Mattel/Radofin: "The video timing and CPU synchronization are generated by a custom gate array PLA-1 (U7). The master clock frequency of PLA-1 is 7.15909 MHz and is divided internally in the PLA to provide the 3.579545 MHz CPU clock. The video scanning rate is one eighth of the master clock frequency." (I'm sure you already have the archival scans of the Technical Specification and System Description documents that have been floating around for a while now, but I'll attach them here just in case.) Aquarius - Technical Specification.pdf Aquarius - System Description.pdf
  7. John Adams on Independence Day, 1776: "I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival ... it ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other, from this time forward forever more."

  8. Certainly! Just about every title in the collection has some sort of trivia; just highlight the title in the menu, and then press "3" on the keyboard or hand controller to view the trivia file.
  9. The chess engines used in both games were licensed from the same developers; Mattel didn't have the expertise in-house to implement a chess game entirely from scratch. Here is a snippet from the Aquarius Chess trivia file in the Aquaricart: "Like the Intellivision's USCF Chess, Aquarius Chess features a computer opponent which was not programmed at Mattel, but was implemented using a chess engine licensed from an outside company. Heuristic Software Corporation was founded by chess player Julio Kaplan, International Master and winner of the 1967 World Junior Chess Championship. At his previous company, Teletape Productions, Kaplan recruited programmer (and fellow chess expert) Craig Barnes in 1980, and together they developed the chess engines which were used in Mattel's Computer Chess handheld and in USCF Chess for the Intellivision. After completing these projects for Mattel, Kaplan left Teletape Productions to start Heuristic Software in 1982, and Barnes joined him as Senior Programmer. Heuristic Software developed the chess engine for Aquarius Chess, along with many other intelligent strategy games and other consumer products (checkers, chess, bridge, calculators, combination games, etc.), before closing its doors in 1995." (The user interface for both games was designed and programmed at Mattel, on the Intellivision by Russ Ludwick and on the Aquarius by Stan Summay.)
  10. Excellent! Hopefully this will make your development cycle easier, since you can now test new SuperCart ROMs without having to burn an EPROM.
  11. Glad it was helpful! And yes, that's exactly how the bank switching works; apologies if that wasn't clear. You can think of it as changing channels or selecting inputs on a TV: the physical buttons that you press are in one location (the control panel), and the selected channel or input appears in another location (the TV screen). In this case, the "control panel" is the $E000 bank, and the "TV screen" is the $C000 bank. (This may seem confusing, but I didn't have much of a choice except to make $E000 the fixed bank. This is the location that the Aquarius checks first for a valid cartridge ROM, so for the boot process to be consistent, it had to be mapped to a ROM bank that would always be the same. I also couldn't continue to use $C000 for bank switch writes, because with the SuperCart II, writable memory will be banked into that space as well as ROM.)
  12. In the code where you are loading the sample data, I notice that you are starting at address $E000: ld hl, $E000 ; (10) Memory Location to ROM Sample ld a, (hl) ; (7) load first sample set into A Is this where you intend to be loading your data from? I was under the impression that your data is in the switchable banks, which start at $C000, while the code is in the fixed bank starting at $E000. Loading from $E000 will cause the bytes of the cartridge header and your assembled code to be treated as if they were sample data, which is probably not what you meant to do. (Remember, the only instances of $C000 that you need to change are the ones where you are writing the bank number to perform the bank switching. If you're referring to location $C000 elsewhere for other purposes, those references should be kept.)
  13. I noticed that, too, and I figured that had to be the reason. (It seems as if the controller issues in this game could be solved with changes to the programming. I don't remember the controls in Miner 2049er being so picky. If nobody else has looked into developing a fix, I might try it myself.)
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