jaybird3rd

The Super Pro sports games were extended versions of the original sports titles that were done at Mattel; they took advantage of the larger ROM capacities that were available in the mid-to-late 80s and typically added computer opponents, new features, improved graphics, etc. This was done for two reasons: the sports games were among the most popular Intellivision titles, and extending the existing code saved time and money compared to developing new games from scratch. That said, there are several Super Pro titles that were not based on older Mattel versions; some examples that come to mind are Chip Shot, Decathlon, Spiker, Body Slam, and the unreleased Deep Pockets.

Crap. *hobbles away on walker with Dr. Mario decal* Ouch! That was worded a little harshly, wasn't it? Apologies if I offended anyone; that's what I get for writing in a hurry. It's just interesting to me that this particular game seems to be so appealing to people who otherwise never play games.

I seem to recall trying a ColecoVision controller with the Intellivision II at one point, but it didn't work. They may look similar, but they're probably totally different internally. The best advice I can give about the Intellivision hand controller is to try not to treat it like a gamepad. Instead of pushing it up/down/left/right with your thumb, "spin" the disc along its edge when you transition from one direction to another adjacent direction (from "right" to "up," from "up" to "left," etc). You might find it more comfortable to use your index or middle finger instead of your thumb; hold the controller in your left hand and use your right fingers on the disc (or the opposite if you're left-handed, I suppose). For games that require lots of side-to-side motion, like Astrosmash, "rock" the disc back and forth with your index and middle fingers.

"Pepper II: Electric Boogaloo" Sorry ... somebody had to say it. It's the first thing I thought of when I first heard the title.

I'm amazed at how many people I know who aren't really into video games but who really love Dr. Mario. It seems to be especially popular with old people; I've got two grandparents and other older relatives who love it.

No need to apologize at all; my comment wasn't directed at you, but at the person who wrote the post I linked to. There is a kind of good-natured ribbing that comes from affection, and then there's ridicule that is meant to be sarcastic and provocative. I saw the other person's "non-viable community" comments as being of the latter kind, and that's all I had an issue with. Anything you said was harmless fun, and you should never have to apologize for that.

Yes, that's a big part of it. The Yahoo! group is a treasure trove of Aquarius information, and it's a great way to keep in touch with other Aquarius enthusiasts; I think there are a lot more of them over there than there are over here. However, the AtariAge community as a whole is much larger, with a diverse range of individuals who may not be Aquarius users but who are looking for opportunities to contribute their talents to various homebrew/hobbyist projects. It makes for a very fertile environment for projects like this one, because there are so many different kinds of resources to draw upon. Just to give you one example (and this is as good a time as any to say this), one of the most important reasons why the hardware portion of this project worked out as well as it has is because GroovyBee was here and was willing to contribute his expertise. It was he who first planted the thought in my head of implementing a software-based bankswitching solution (as opposed to the very limiting switch-based idea I started with) way back in late April, and everybody should know that he was very generous with his assistance over the months that followed, on everything from the circuit design to the board layout. I'm sure that my newbie questions became annoying to him at times, but his input was critical to the success of the project, and I don't know how I could have finished the new cartridge board without his help. Speaking of the boards, I finally managed to get past the last few annoying problems, and the final boards are now IN PRODUCTION! If all goes well, I should be receiving them in about a week and a half, shiny gold fingers and all.

Printers vary greatly in their compatibility with Linux, depending mainly on how much "intelligence" is built into the printer. The worst of them (sub-$100 lasers and inkjets) don't even have any onboard firmware: they download it from the host computer on startup, and they require that the host pre-render the printed graphics, and the drivers that support all this are generally Windows-only. However, the more expensive ones have onboard processors and are compatible with standards like PostScript or PCL, and those generally work well with Linux/Unix print engines (apsfilter, CUPS, etc). As a general rule, the only modems that work with Linux are "hardware modems" which connect to a serial port; software modems--known as "Winmodems"--also require drivers that are usually only available for Windows. Fortunately, analog modems are virtually obsolete nowadays except for a few limited applications (such as fax servers), so it's not much of an issue anymore. In my opinion, it would be a waste to include one in a new "Atari PC," assuming one ever comes to fruition, since a lot of people don't even have land lines in their homes anymore.

I just took a quick look around, and it seems that there are vinyl adhesives that can be printed with an ordinary inkjet printer. I don't know how the quality would compare, but another alternative to consider is printing the overlay text/graphics onto one of these printable sheets instead of printing directly onto the card stock. This way, you could stick the printed vinyl onto plain black card stock and cut it, which would use a lot less ink/toner than printing the black onto white card stock. EDIT: Actually, that idea might not work out. I just remembered that most of the text on the Aquarius overlays is white on a black or color background, which you can't really reproduce with an inkjet printer (at least while printing on transparent material).

Okay, I talked to the board house, and adding those holes to the Mill layer was the easiest option. I did so and sent it back to them, and they just said that it's now okay to process. Thanks again for all your help!

Another similar title to Pitfall II that I can think of is Pharaoh's Curse by Synapse Software, which is also a treasure hunt in a large multi-screen world. There is also Spelunker, but that might be more level-based than what you're looking for. It also suffers from the unfortunate "fall one pixel and you die" syndrome that has ruined so many other potentially great games.

If the drill file can only specify circular holes, that's probably the reason. I already have several circular holes on this board, but when I tried to overlap them, the board failed Eagle's DRC checks. The holes need to be ovals because the posts are in slightly different positions depending on which variety of cartridge shell the board is used in: some have screws, while others have plastic pins. Another option that occurs to me is to specify these holes in the Mill layer instead (a Gerber .GML file). I'll bring these alternatives to the board house to see what they say. Thanks!

Very nice job! Those look really good! I'm especially pleased to see that the cutter can handle square corners so well. Here's an idea that occurs to me: might it be possible to use a sheet of transparent vinyl adhesive to cover the card stock before you cut it? This might make the overlays more durable, and at the same time, prevent the toner from flaking off of the paper.

I'm hoping this will be a simple question to those who have more experience with circuit board layout than I do. I'm working on the final revisions to my Mattel Aquarius multi-cart circuit board, using Eagle 5.10.0. It needs to include elongated oval holes in the top corners for the screw posts, like this: I currently have these holes specified as filled polygons in the Dimension, Holes, and Drill layers. They're showing up in the top copper layer when I export the design to Gerber files, but my manufacturer is asking me to move them into the drill file instead. I've selected the correct layers in the Eagle CAM processor, but I can't get these holes to show up in the drill file. I've Googled every permutation of "eagle polygon hole drill file" that I can think of, and I can't find anything relevant. So, my question is: has anyone here used holes similar to these in other projects, and if so, how did you get them into the drill file? Should they be polygons, or should I specify them some other way? Thanks in advance!

Unfortunately, it probably isn't possible to get good sales data for the Aquarius. The Mattel sales records are the ones that are most likely to still be in existence, but they would only cover a short period. Radofin went into bankruptcy some twenty years ago, so I'm sure their sales information has long since been lost. I'm also sure that a great many have been thrown away in the twenty-five years or so since the last of them were made, which is a shame. But what's amazing is that, for a low-budget computer that had such a short lifespan, a remarkable number have survived and can still be obtained fairly cheaply on eBay. I don't think I've paid more than about $35 shipped for a complete (unboxed) computer, with a Mini-Expander and a couple cartridges. What's even more remarkable is that those Aquarius computers that are still around seem to have held up pretty well. I own six of them now, and although several of those are pretty beat up, I've never gotten a dead one. The hardware that was used and the construction is also of surprisingly good quality, especially considering the (relatively) low price point that these machines were targeted for.

I like Pitfall II. As I've said elsewhere, I think that more random elements would have given the game more replay value, and I get annoyed sometimes running into the flying enemies. Nevertheless, it's a great title for the 400/800 computer series. David Crane told an interesting story about an experiment that was conducted at Activision during the development of the Atari 400/800 and Commodore 64 versions of Pitfall II. The two programmers tasked with the conversions, working in parallel, took two different approaches: the C64 version was coded from scratch, using the original 2600 version as a model, while the Atari version took the original 2600 source code and modified it for the 400/800 hardware. Crane was curious to see which approach would work the best, and as it happens, the two programmers finished their work at the same time. But, while the C64 version needed a full debugging cycle, Mike Lorenzen (the Atari programmer) only had to fix the bugs related to the 400/800 modifications, because the original 2600 code he started with was "bug-free." This gave him some extra time during the debugging phase, which he used to add a whole new level to the game. This is the reason why the Atari 400/800 version has an extra level, while the C64 version does not.

A great many of them are available at the Mattel Aquarius Discussion Group. They are generally archived in .CAQ format, which is more space-efficient than .WAV files. Several cassette images (and cartridge binaries) are also bundled with the Virtual Aquarius emulator, which also includes tools to convert them back to .WAV files in case you'd like to use them with a real Aquarius.

When I use the term "contemporary" in this context, I simply mean that the 7800, NES, and SMS were being sold and supported by their respective manufacturers during the same time period, not that the designs or the hardware in the consoles were all the same age. In other words, somebody walking into a video game store in 1988 could have bought either an NES, an SMS, or a 7800 new off the shelf, and all three of them were still getting new games. As I said earlier, my purpose was only to give the reader a general idea of where the 7800 appears in the video game time line, relative to other popular consoles. I didn't want to get into the other complexities of the situation because there isn't room for that in a one-paragraph forum description, and because everyone seems to have different views on the subject (as evidenced by the fact that this discussion is still continuing even after the forum description issue has been resolved).

The song is called "My Intellivision (1982 Mix)", and it's included in the Intellivision in Hi-Fi album. From the liner notes: (I actually think those sound effects are from Night Stalker and not Snafu).

Hey, no worries ... that's not nearly as bad as suggesting that we aren't a viable community or anything of that sort!

Well, I think that's only one or two steps removed from what I started with, so don't feel so bad!

While I'm at it, I should also say that I've thought seriously about the many suggestions that were submitted for a final name for the multi-cart. I've decided on "Aquaricart" as the final name, but I'm very grateful to everyone who contributed their ideas. "Aquaricart" is nice and easy to say, it ties in nicely with "Intellicart" (Chad Schell's earlier multi-cart for the Intellivision), there are presently no other occurrences of that name to be found on Google (outside of this thread), and most important, "Aquaricart" has an even number of letters in it, so I can center it perfectly on the Aquarius's 40-column screen without having more spaces on one side than the other! (I'm keeping "Album Cartridge" as the "subtitle," because I still like it much better than "multi-cart.") Many thanks to BassGuitari, who was (I think) the one who suggested the name first!

I've been asked this by several people, so let me give my answer here. I'm very grateful for your interest, but I decided early on that I was not going to be offering open pre-orders on this project. The main reason is that, in the years I've been watching the classic gaming and computing hobby, I've seen pre-orders go disastrously wrong in too many different ways. I didn't want to create even the possibility of something similar happening with my project, especially given all of the unknowns that were involved: it was my first attempt to design a hardware product of any kind, the first time anyone had implemented a bankswitched cartridge design on the Aquarius, and so on. The project could very easily have failed at any number of points in its evolution. I'm very glad that it didn't, but I'm also glad that I did the whole thing out of my own pocket, so that the risk was mine alone. I hope my reasons for foregoing pre-orders sound reasonable to you, but don't worry: when they're finally ready to ship, there should be plenty of multi-carts available for everyone who wants one. In the interest of full disclosure, I will say that I have extended private pre-order invitations to a few individuals, mostly to people who have been following the project and who expressed interest in it early on. But that was only so I could get enough of my money back to manufacture the boards and to acquire the other components I will need, and as I told them, I was reluctant to take even that small step until I was certain that all the required pieces (hardware and software) were present and working well together, albeit in an incomplete form. Limiting my pre-orders to a small group of people will also make it easier to issue full refunds if I get hit by a truck or if some other unexpected crisis occurs. I'm very close to the end now, and I'm not anticipating any such crisis. At the moment, I'm only aware of one remaining issue that might (but probably won't) affect the success of the project; the rest is just finishing what I've started and making it as polished and as professional as I can make it. I'm still on track to have it done within three or four weeks, but if something happens to change that, I'll let everyone here know about it immediately.

I just added the hardware (ten pieces altogether) that I have within reach. I've got some more stuff in storage.

Ah, understood. Yes, putting 16K of RAM in the cartridge space would indeed give you 52K: 16K in the cartridge space, 32K in the RAM space, and 4K onboard. It is possible to have RAM "underneath" the cartridge ROM (I know Atari computers do this when the built-in BASIC is enabled), but in order to access it, you'd need a way to disable and re-enable the ROM in software. I don't know of any way to do this on the Aquarius, and if you really need more than 32K, you could just as easily use a bankswitched RAM nowadays (although the software would have to be specifically designed to support it). Thanks for the clarification. I'll definitely document the 4K-to-32K upgrade. It's really quite simple; the hardest part is getting rid of the old chips and the damned RF shield that Radofin welded onto the board. The Aquarius really should never have been sold without the Mini-Expander; it's a seriously crippled system without it. It's somewhat unique to have two cartridge ports available instead of just one, especially since they're more like fully-featured expansion slots than the usual cartridge ports. You can put almost any kind of peripheral you can imagine (flash card adapters, etc) into that "Memory" slot, and still have the "Program" slot available for cartridge software. I do know that, if it wasn't for the Mini-Expander, I probably wouldn't have given the Aquarius a second look. I also tend to agree about keeping the ROM and RAM separate. My original concept for the board included onboard RAM as a standard feature. I very quickly got rid of it because of a lack of space, but thinking about it later, I realize that it's "cleaner" to keep the RAM as a separate option, which can be upgraded or replaced individually. However, if you know for a certainty that the Mini-Expander will never be an option, at least now there's a way to squeeze in some extra RAM without it. I didn't mean to derail this thread ...