jaybird3rd

It's such a pity that so many of the titles listed on the BSR's Aquarius page didn't make it out. I would have loved to see Bump 'n' Jump, Lock 'n' Chase, and Sea Battle on the Aquarius, or even some more of the "edutainment" titles. Educational technology is an interesting area to me, and it looks like Mattel was doing a lot of work in it when the Aquarius was axed. Lock 'n' Chase and Sea Battle are actually listed as "Coming Soon!" in the Aquarius catalogs that I've seen (complete with faux screenshots, apparently modeled after the Intellivision versions), which seems to suggest that they were at least in development at the time. Does anyone know if any prototypes of these games have ever surfaced?

The Blue Sky Rangers' Aquarius page does mention "Math & Mazes" as one of the "edutainment" titles, and I'm almost positive that this was the working title for Zero In; Space Speller is also listed as "Spelling in Space". But whether that's true or not, Zero In was definitely developed at Mattel (their name is on the title screen), so I wouldn't consider it a "third party" release, either; it was merely branded differently on the only scan of the manual that we have. I thought the Ecico name rang a bell, although I couldn't find a picture of their Arabic version of the Aquarius earlier. That machine looks fascinating to me, and I wonder if the built-in character set was any different.

what? this is crazy. maybe because this guy had all the games loaded? but that isnt that hard is it? Either that or somebody really really didn't want to be bothered paying by check or money order to get a new one directly from Schell's for about $80 less. That's the only explanation I can think of. At that price, they could have gotten a new CC3 as well as new copies of Intellivision Lives! and Intellivision Rocks! and still had money left over.

Yes, indeed! Great to see you here on AtariAge, Martin!

It seems that our wish has been granted! Thanks, Albert!

Yeah, that drives me crazy, too. Whenever I'd listen to some kewl l33t C64 demo that supposedly "proved" how much better the SID sounded, all I'd hear is the same warbling underwater ringtone music that I always hear in those annoying A8 demos. I'd love to hear something like a straightforward interpretation of some nice classical music, instead of more of the same warbling Euro-techno junk. Of course, I've been working primarily with the Intellivision and Aquarius recently, so I've gotten to appreciate the AY series a little more. Some of the later Intellivision games in particular made good use of that family of chips.

Okay, I can't resist: out their what?

Old news ... that description was changed two months ago. I didn't have any particular problem with the old description, but I'd still like it better if one of the new suggestions (such as my most recent one) were used instead. No need for the 7800 forum to be stuck with an unusually terse description just because a few persnickety individuals couldn't agree on which console was released first, or on what was done by whom in response to what.

I just got to the part where Keith mentions the Triple Action Biplanes tournament that was videotaped with running commentary on Steve Montero's last day at Mattel. I found it on YouTube, so if anyone would like to see it, here it is. Fun stuff! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_PDo3V15lY

This one? eBay Auction -- Item Number: 260670763136 That's an ECS Computer Adaptor, which adds a computer keyboard to the Intellivision, along with an extra sound chip and expanded RAM. It does require an Intellivision, and it's best to use it with an Intellivision II, since it matches the console. That's actually not too bad for a CIB unit (they generally seem to go for about $120), especially one that's in nice shape and includes a copy of Mind Strike.

I love Keith Robinson's comment about homebrews: "More originality, please!" That was said about Intellivision homebrews, but I think it applies equally well to homebrews for other classic consoles.

LOL, 'douched' i meant to say touched. Yes, I noticed the typo; I just didn't want to rub it in (so to speak).

Very interesting. Thanks for looking into that. It seems so strange that Radofin wouldn't continue to produce the Mini-Expander: it remedied some of the system's most serious shortcomings, and the Aquarius was pretty weak (and thus a much harder sell) without it. To be sure, it was a very Mattel-influenced design, and perhaps they didn't want that association after they got the system back. Or, perhaps there weren't enough of the old Mattel titles that used it still in production to justify making more; the later titles that they released under their own name (Chess, Zero-In, Space Speller, etc) worked fine without it.

Thanks! Let me know if your Dad wants one, too; I'll probably offer a discount to people who would like to order more than one. Well, it will be off in the future a bit: I've got the multi-cart to finish, then the video upgrade board and my first Aquarius game, and probably one other hardware upgrade after that (not an internal upgrade; it will plug into the Mini-Expander controller ports). Once all that is squared away, then I'll start looking at the flash cart.

Mattel must have gotten a good price on 2K SRAM chips. The 4K cartridges contain two of them, the same ones used inside the Aquarius computer itself. I think the best use for the 4K cartridges nowadays is to upgrade them to 32K. I've worked out a procedure for doing it very easily, with only a few inexpensive parts and a bit of soldering; the hardest part is getting the cartridge open and pulling out the old chips. After the project is finished, when I have time, I'll document the procedure so other Aquarius owners can try it. I've upgraded a few of them to 32K myself, and I'll soon be offering them for sale to help offset the development costs for the multi-cart project. I might even put one on eBay, just to spite the crazy eBay guy.

Hey, no problem! Incidentally, that 16K requirement is another reason I opted not to include the cassette games in the multi-cart. I would have had to make a new RAM upgrade to go with it because relatively few people own 16K modules, and again, I felt those resources would have been better spent on the flash cartridge (which will also include a full 32K of expanded RAM). I just looked over the four Mini-Expanders that I have in my collection, and they're all Mattel Electronics branded.

To be honest, I don't use mine very much any longer, particularly now that we have MyIDE and other more modern alternatives. I think the biggest problem with 3.5" XF551 drives is that they require two disks to replace every 5.25" disk that was a "flippy" (such as games that used both sides of one or more disks). Even the HyperXF firmware, which gave you the ability to put up to four "partitions" on one 720K disk, didn't give you the ability to switch from one to the other on the fly. So, you end up with piles of disks that are only 12.5% full, because the old software that's on them wasn't designed to use all of the available space. Having 720K of storage on one disk is great if you need to fill it up with binaries or data files, provided you use a DOS that can support it, but again, MyIDE and other solutions do the job better nowadays.

That's true, but they could also have used the 16K RAM module plugged directly into the computer. I guess they were trying to target the broadest possible range of users, not all of whom would have had the Mini-Expander. This brings up something I've wondered about: did Radofin continue to produce Mini-Expanders after Mattel returned the Aquarius rights to them? If not, that might be another reason it wasn't used more by third-party software, most of which was released after Mattel dropped support for the system.

Well, they're very different machines, so any "port" of those programs would probably amount to a complete rewrite. The only thing the two machines really have in common is the sound chip and controllers that come with the Mini-Expander, but according to this list that the-topdog posted in another thread, few (if any) of the third-party cassette releases supported the Mini-Expander (except perhaps for extra RAM). I'm not quite sure why that is, since the games in particular could have benefited greatly from it, but that's a whole separate topic.

It will be cartridge software only (about twenty-two titles in all), so those won't be included. It would have been a lot more work to create cartridge conversions of the cassette software, and even then, I couldn't include those programs that were written in BASIC. As I indicated earlier, I'd rather save that effort for a future project, which will involve a flash cartridge that can load and save cassette images (among many other things). Limiting the multi-cart to first-party cartridge releases was one way to keep the project manageable; even with a one megabyte ROM, it will take some work to squeeze in all the software, documentation, and historical material as it is.

Well, that's true ... I guess I've just gotten used to scanning things lately. Another possibility would be to port the Infocom virtual machine (the "Z-machine"), probably from another Z80-based platform, so you could play the Infocom adventures (the Zork series, etc) on the Aquarius. My new cartridge boards will support ROMs that would be more than large enough for the software and the adventure data, and the response times will be much faster than if those games were played from floppy disk.

As I recall, in addition to adapting the data cable from a two-row pin header to the XF551's card-edge connector, you also have to reconfigure the "drive select jumper" on the floppy drive itself. The default setting for PC-compatible drives is DRIVE1, but the XF551 requires DRIVE0. Floppy drive manufacturers have long since stopped putting a physical jumper on their drives for this, but I successfully converted a Sony 1.44MB drive mech for the '551 by finding the solder footprints on the drive's logic board and moving a small resistor. If you're using a 1.44MB drive, you might also modify the drive's density selection switch, which corresponds to the notch in the top of 3.5" floppy disks opposite the write-protect notch. This notch is open for 1.44MB media but closed for 720K media. I simply prevented my drive from ever entering 1.44MB mode by replacing this switch with a jumper wire, ensuring that it is always "closed". That was all I had to do (besides replacing the XF551 firmware) to get a new, bone-stock Sony 1.44MB floppy drive mech to work inside my '551. I haven't used it with enough 1.44MB floppy disks (formatted to 720K) to speak to its reliability, but it seemed to work for me, at least in the short-term. I tend to use 720K media, though, just to be on the safe side, and I haven't had any trouble with this so far.

I noticed that, too, when I first saw the Zero In cover yesterday afternoon (I think I mentioned it to you in a PM, actually). Is that the same company that produced the version of the Aquarius with Arabic characters on the keyboard?

That's interesting. It's really too bad we didn't see any third-party cartridge games, but I guess cartridges would have been too expensive to produce.

That's a neat idea. What color would you pick?