jaybird3rd

One other thing to try: if you are testing the 16K module in the Aquarius Mini Expander, try it in the Aquarius console itself, or vice-versa. Of course, you should also check to make sure the pins on the card edge are clean and free of corrosion.

You should be able to edit it now. Let me know if you're still having trouble.

As MrBeefy has pointed out, there is a need for an informational thread about the Intellivision Amico and Intellivision Entertainment, and that was the original purpose of this thread. Unfortunately, and as those who have been following it can see by now, this thread has since been derailed, and in my opinion it is too far gone at this point to continue to serve its original purpose. I won't attempt to argue any further about whether there has been any attempt here or elsewhere to control the narrative, or to permit only positive discussions, about the Amico. I maintain that neither the moderators nor any of the principals involved have attempted to directly exert any such control, but others do not see it that way. So be it. What is clear is that there is still a need for an independent thread, so after discussing the matter with MrBeefy, we have decided to start a new thread, with its own rules of conduct to prevent the same derailment from happening again. In crafting these rules (which were reviewed and approved in advance by MrBeefy), I have attempted to take into account the legitimate grievances that several of you have raised over the course of these discussions; I hope that these rules will help to avoid such issues in the future. If you have any questions about them, please let me know. If anyone has posted information in this thread that they think would be beneficial to include in the new thread, you are more than welcome to add it. For now, I'm going to lock this thread so that any further Amico discussions can be taken to the new thread. See you there!

As its title indicates, this is an *independent* thread for discussing and sharing information about the Intellivision Amico and/or Intellivision Entertainment. "Independent" means that all participants are free to express their own perspectives and their own points of view, entirely in their own words. Whether they are positive or negative, critical or supportive, all views are welcome. This thread is specifically for discussions among current or prospective Intellivision consumers, collectors, and fans; if you have questions intended for official representatives of Intellivision Entertainment, they should be raised through the proper channels, such as Tommy Tallarico's Q&A Thread right here on AtariAge. This thread is a replacement for an earlier one which was unfortunately derailed, so to prevent the same thing from happening again, I'd like to outline a few simple rules of conduct, in addition to those already outlined in our community guidelines. Everyone who participates in this thread thereby agrees to abide by these rules, so before posting, please read them in detail: 1. The information provided in this thread should be understood as a work in progress. Over time, it will necessarily become out of date, or it may be found to be incorrect or incomplete. Any corrections which are offered in a constructive fashion ("constructive" meaning in accordance with our community guidelines) are appreciated and encouraged. If a representative of Intellivision Entertainment wishes to share a correction, they are as welcome to do so as anyone else; however, they should limit themselves specifically to doing that. To protect the independence of these discussions, any posts which are seen as attempts to suppress unflattering news or negative input, or to control the narrative in any other way, will be removed. 2. As stated earlier, this thread welcomes all constructive points of view. However, the guidelines regarding trolling or personal attacks will apply, and all discussions should remain as dispassionate and as impersonal as possible. When it is necessary to discuss any individuals in a critical fashion, it should be done solely for the purpose of offering corrective input, and only the individuals' actions should be criticized, never the individuals themselves. In general, criticizing people only serves to put them on the defensive and to drive them further into whatever problem(s) they may have, which is not conducive to a helpful discussion. 3. If any forum member observes behavior by a participant in this thread which they understand to be against the community guidelines, against these rules, or against the overall spirit of the thread or of these discussion forums, the correct and only course of action is to report such behavior to the moderating team and to thereafter leave the matter entirely to them. Under no circumstances whatsoever is anyone to take it upon themselves to respond in kind, to "highlight" or "call out" the behavior, to answer any specific points raised by the participant in question, to escalate or perpetuate the argument, to retreat to another thread or to the status updates for the purpose of making comment on the behavior there, or to take the matter into their own hands in any other way. These rules will apply to everyone equally. Any posts which are found to violate these rules or the community guidelines will be removed, and repeat offenders will be blocked from further participating in the thread. These disciplinary actions are the sole prerogative of the moderating team, and any such actions will be taken solely at the moderators' own discretion and judgment. If anyone believes that an action was taken in error, the matter should be raised directly with the moderating team.

Thanks to all three of you! That's clearer to me after reading it more closely. We obviously can't control what happens on YouTube, but I know that there are still lingering doubts on the part of some over the way that I and others have handled our moderating decisions (particularly in the Q&A thread, which kevtris did mention), so for those people, I would still offer my post as a clarification.

Very sound and sensible advice, kevtris. Thank you for taking the time to share it. I would like to respond to one point, not to disagree with you in any way, but simply to provide my own view on what has been happening in the Q&A thread (as the one who has been doing most of the day-to-day moderating over there). This will be another lengthy post, so apologies in advance ... (EDIT: I realize now that this was in reference to comments posted on YouTube, not on AtariAge, but my points below are still applicable to the situation here.) As much as some people refuse to believe this, I can tell you with certainty that neither I nor any of the other moderators have been culling comments here on the forums specifically for the purpose of hiding negative feedback or shaping the narrative around the Amico in a positive way. I wouldn't do that even if the idea had occurred to me, because like you, I recognize the value that negative input can have to a project of this kind. I'm so glad that our community has the opportunity to discuss the Amico project directly with the principals in this way, and one of the reasons is precisely because I think the people here are in a unique position to be able to provide such corrective feedback, and that doing so can only benefit everyone involved. I think that a Q&A thread like that one is more likely to attract enthusiasts than anyone else, so it's not surprising that a disproportionate percentage of the comments have been positive. The participants in that thread have naturally divided into the majority of enthusiasts on one side, and on the other side, a very small handful of people who for reasons of their own (which I won't get into here) could not refrain from creating drama and who ultimately had to be ushered out. The people in the middle, who brought a more neutral stance and/or a more critical view, are not as apparent to those who haven't been following it from the beginning, because most of them had their questions and concerns satisfactorily addressed many pages back. They subsequently decided to adopt a "wait-and-see" attitude and peacefully checked out of the thread after that, or else they were won over to the enthusiast camp and have continued participating. As for the regrettable incident that you mention, about the one member who was unfairly harangued after expressing a less-enthusiastic view, I would consider that to be an overabundance of enthusiasm on the part of those involved and not anything deliberately malicious. But however one classifies it, that particular case was handled in exactly the way these situations should be handled: the user went through proper channels and reported it to the moderators, I promptly posted a reply gently asking everyone to dial it back, the user expressed their thanks, and they continued to be a part of the discussion after that. (There is no need to take my word for it; anyone who wants to can go back and read the posts for themselves.) That was just one incident in the 200+ pages of the thread so far, and I certainly wouldn't consider it to be representative of the interactions over there, which have mostly remained friendly and constructive. To repeat a point already made, nobody here is opposed to criticisms, skepticism, doubts, or any other negative input, as long as it can be expressed constructively and dispassionately. ("Constructively," by the way, means in accordance with the community guidelines, not in accordance with the wishes or whims of any particular individual(s) in the discussion, moderators included!) In cases where anyone involved chooses to interact with the community differently, the correct course is to raise the issue with the moderators and let us handle it; we are a collaborative group, and you can trust that we will reach consensus among ourselves on how to deal with any such situations appropriately. The few people who had to be ushered out of the Q&A thread--and there really haven't been that many--are those who chose instead to take matters into their own hands. I hope we can all avoid that, and can continue the conversation in a positive way.

<sigh> Has everybody finished now?

Done!

I just had to hide yet another batch of posts, so let me add to my earlier post by quoting from the community guidelines: That means that it is the moderators' job to deal with provocative posts or topics, not yours. So, if you simply dislike what someone says, use the "Ignore" button and leave it at that. If anyone sees something that requires action on our part, report it. If you feel that I or anyone else on the moderating staff is not handling the situation adequately, make that case to the other moderators/admins. Thread derailments would not happen so often if more people could refrain from "playing moderator," taking matters into their own hands, or dragging old controversies into new threads. I'm getting tired of repeating myself on this, and I don't want to have to start blocking people from this thread as well, so please don't anyone make that necessary.

My view (for whatever it's worth) is that the answer to this question should generally be no. If there is information in a thread that is incorrect or incomplete, and if someone has the necessary information to remedy that, why shouldn't they be allowed to share it? The more misinformation that is allowed to stand on the forums, the less trustworthy the forums become, and therefore the less useful they are as a resource. I certainly wouldn't want to see that happen. Here is what I would like to see (and this is a general statement that applies to everyone equally): when incorrect or incomplete information is posted, in this thread or any other, anyone who writes a post for the purpose of correcting it should limit themselves specifically to that. That's the only way to keep a discussion from becoming contentious, or being redirected down irrelevant trails.

The Aquarius BASIC/OS scans for available RAM on startup by looking for writable memory from (I think) addresses $4000 to $BFFF; it stops as soon as it encounters a location where the value it reads from RAM is not the same value it wrote into it. The original 16K RAM module is a delicate design: it uses eight surface-mounted 2K SRAM chips (with some decoding logic for chip selection) on two boards. If not all of the RAM in your module is being detected, then one or more of these chips are likely to be defective. Radofin (the company that designed and manufactured the Aquarius for Mattel Electronics) used a diagnostic cartridge to test new 16K modules; I included this in the Aquaricart collection. So, if you have an Aquaricart, and if you run this diagnostic against your 16K module, it will tell you the specific chip(s) that will need to be replaced, if you are interested in repairing it. You might also consider replacing it with one of the new 32K RAM modules that I offer; these use a considerably simpler design based on a single 32K SRAM.

I think it's just growing pains. The "Intellivision / Aquarius" subforum has become by far the most active of all the subforums in "Classic Gaming General" (in terms of the number of topics and posts), and it's inevitable that when more people enter a community, you get more conflict. I'm pleased to see that the Amico discussion has been attracting quite a few new people.

In case you hadn't noticed, both sides of the most recent blow-up had their posts removed. Despite certain peoples' claims that a neutral thread somehow wouldn't be "allowed" to happen, this thread was created, and I even granted open-ended edit permissions to the first post so that it could be kept up to date. The only thing that would prevent "valid discussion" from happening is if I or the other moderators "played favorites" or tipped the discussion in one direction or the other through their own selectivity, as I in particular continue to be accused of doing. As I've said over and over again ad nauseum, and as CPUWIZ just confirmed above, that is not happening here. Everybody gets to have their say, as long as they can do it within the community guidelines—which, to say it once again, will apply to everybody.

Of course! I don't think that anybody involved with the Amico project would have any objection to negative input; if I were in their place, I would see that as being just as valuable and enlightening as positive input. The people who claim that any negative input is somehow being forbidden are the people who have repeatedly crossed the line into making it personal, and who can't tell the difference between that and the kind of objective discussion that you and everyone else would like to have. That's the kind of discussion that a forum like ours is supposed to be for, and I don't want those few bad actors to ruin it for everyone else.

I just had to clean up a group of posts from the same group of actors who have been creating drama and problems in other Amico-related threads. Let's see if we can keep this thread free of all that. If certain peoples' personalities clash to such an extent that they cannot exist in the same thread without going at each others' throats, perhaps they should agree to avoid each other and use the "Ignore" button for its intended purpose. If there are any further outbursts, the people involved will be blocked from the thread. (And yes, that applies to everybody.)

I would imagine that they reused their Intellivision screenshots just to save time on the catalog designs. The screenshot of Chess that is shown in the catalog is the Intellivision version, too. EDIT: ... and so is the Utopia screenshot! Astrosmash and Snafu are probably the Intellivision versions, too, but they look very similar on the Aquarius.

They're all stylized screenshots (in the American catalog, too), but I'm pretty sure that it was based on the Intellivision version. The last time I studied it closely, the contours of the islands seemed a little too fine-grained for the Aquarius's relatively chunky character graphics.

Thank you very much! These will certainly be useful. Interesting that this catalog also includes the unreleased Lock 'n' Chase and Sea Battle. Those two games must have been far along in development; I've even seen a box mockup for Lock 'n' Chase. Here's hoping that prototypes are discovered someday!

I don't want to stir up the controversy yet again (so feel free to skip this post if you're tired of hearing about it), but I suspect that CPUWIZ posted his message in both places because some of the people who've been blocked from this thread continue to follow it—for example, there's nothing preventing them from logging out and viewing it in guest mode—and that this was simply a way of ensuring that they all saw it. I don't think the message was meant for most of you here. I don't know how many times we've all gone out of our way to say that rational concerns and criticisms are welcomed and encouraged, so it is regrettable that it became necessary to block anyone at all. The concerns that they initially raised were also raised about other console projects in the past—and by some of the same people—and they ultimately proved to be right in the case of the RetroVGS/Chameleon in particular. The problem is not that these concerns were raised at all, but that even after they were satisfactorily addressed (in many instances by Tommy himself), those people would not let them go, and they ultimately escalated into baseless accusations and borderline paranoia. That kind of behavior, no matter by whom practiced, cannot be allowed to run rampant. However, I for one am determined not to allow all that drama to detract from the discussion here. We'll all do our best to keep it positive and constructive.

Done!

Yeah, I'm kinda getting used to that today. First of all, there are not "two different standards." There are only a handful of us moderators, we're kept pretty busy as it is, and we can't be everywhere at once, especially in a fast-moving thread like this one. If someone feels that they're being put upon or treated unfairly, they should report the posts in question so that we can be made aware of it; that's what the "Report" button is for. We all enforce the rules as fairly and as consistently as we can, when we're made aware that infractions are happening.

Very interesting. I don't believe I've seen that one before.

Thank you. That's exactly how I see it, too. We've said several times that well-intentioned, reasoned, fair questions are welcomed and encouraged; you'll find many such questions in Tommy's thread that haven't been "censored" in the least. But for certain people, these questions quickly and habitually gave way to wild accusations, unsubstantiated charges, and borderline paranoia. It got to the point where we didn't have much of a choice but to block those people from the other thread, because they were inhibiting the positive, constructive exchange that a discussion forum is supposed to be about. Now, I'll grant that Tommy has said some things that he later had second thoughts about, and that others may have handled certain interactions with the people here and elsewhere differently. I'm not sure why that's anyone's business other than Tommy and the other parties directly involved, but it's a fair enough criticism. There have also been (very few) occasions when some of the more enthusiastic participants in the other thread got carried away in trying to persuade those with a more skeptical view, and I think we've done a pretty good job of keeping that under control, too. (More often than not, these were new members who were not accustomed to interacting with the community here and who simply needed to be shown where the lines were drawn.) But the magnitude of the visceral reaction in some people still seems to me to be vastly out of proportion to whatever transgressions they're supposedly reacting to. Thank you again. I'd consider the ludicrous idea that Tommy is "sponsoring" AtariAge, or somehow buying preferential treatment, to be a perfect example of the kind of paranoia that I mentioned. I can scarcely imagine what else would prompt someone to posit something as ridiculous as that. To me, it's not hard to understand that everything has its place, and that discussions of the Amico should be taken elsewhere. There's nothing stopping anyone from starting their own Amico thread if they choose; as always, all we ask is that they abide by the community guidelines.

Nobody here is bought and paid for by anyone, and nobody is "slavishly" devoted to anyone. We're not looking out for any one individual's best interest; we are making sure that the forum is able to function and to continue to do its job. "Discussing concerns" rationally and dispassionately is one thing, but certain people here showed themselves to be incapable of doing that, and they are the only ones who were kicked out of the other thread. (And no, it wasn't exclusively my decision, either; it was discussed among the other mods.) As far as the Amico goes, I'll reiterate what I said in Tommy's thread: Or, as CPUWIZ put it:

I suppose that I have to address this since certain people insist on being immature, continuing to take potshots at the Intellivision Amico with their snide indirect references and "footbath" posts. Ironically, these are some of the very same people who previously complained about the Amico discussion in this thread because they claimed that it was "off-topic." In response to that criticism, Tommy Tallarico voluntarily agreed to exit this thread and take any discussion of the Amico to his own thread, but now these people seem to think that bringing up the Amico isn't "off-topic" anymore as long as they do it themselves for the purpose of criticizing it, without Tommy being here to respond. Sorry, but you can't have it both ways. Any further "footbath" posts, or anything else that seems to make oblique reference to the Amico, will be promptly deleted.