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One man's history of his Aquarius.


psquare75

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This may not interest some people, and that's ok :). It sort of came up in one of the recent AQ threads here, I forget which one. I was born in 1980. I was at my parent's house last night for dinner, and I said,

 

"Ok I have to ask. Dad you were pretty good picking out systems (He got a 2600 in '77, a Tandy 1000 in '85, and a NES in '87.) How the hell did we end up with an Aquarius? I mean it was only out for a few months."

 

I had remembered vaguely that "I" got it for Christmas, in what I assume was 1983.

 

"Oh. Your mother got it at Sears". :ponder:

 

"Um, this wasn't exactly the best computer you could have gotten at the time, was it on sale or something?"

 

"Nope. I think it was around $200 for everything."

 

"Wtf?"

 

"We figured it'd be a good first computer for you."

 

Ahhhhhhhh ok, makes sense.

 

I mentioned the upcoming multi-cart.

 

My dad replies "Huh, I didn't realize there were that many games for it" (I only had Burgertime, Snafu, AstroSmash, and AD&D Tarmin at the time.. I never even knew what Night Stalker was)

 

Silence.

 

Then my dad goes "I NEVER did kill that last guy in that dungeon game. There's probably cheats online now for it."

 

:D

Edited by psquare75
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I agree; I always love hearing stories like this. Thanks for sharing!

 

Unfortunately, I can't claim any personal nostalgic attachment to the Aquarius at all. Before I got my first one earlier this year, my only previous contact with it was a brief encounter at a used/secondhand computer store that I worked at around 1990 (I was about 14). My Dad ran the warehouse and brought me in for a part-time job taking apart old computers on weekends, pulling EPROMs and so forth.

 

This was the time when the Intel-based PC was beginning to displace a lot of older systems, so I got to play with some really interesting 70s and 80s technology just as it was exiting the workforce: dedicated word processors (mainly Wang and IBM DisplayWriter systems), the Cromemco C10 (I'd still love to find one of those), DEC Rainbows, and lots of glorious old mainframe stuff, along with the usual mix of Apples, Commodores, and Ataris. I bought my first Atari 800 at that store, along with lots of TI 99/4A stuff (that was my main computer at the time). I still have most of it today.

 

I used to like hanging around in the showroom upstairs, talking to customers and looking at the new stuff on the shelves. That was where I built my first PC, a 12MHz 286 with a megabyte of RAM. Anyway, I went up there one day and spotted this funny little computer with a blue chicklet keyboard, which was unique enough to catch my eye, gathering dust on a high shelf. There had been a lot of Timex-Sinclair clones (like this one) coming through my scrap pile, and because of its similar appearance, I thought the Aquarius was just another one of those, but it intrigued me enough to have remembered it all these years later. I'm pretty sure it was just the bare computer, which wasn't very interesting, but if I had seen a Mini-Expander and some hand controllers and game cartridges with it, I'm positive I would have wanted it. I probably could have gotten it at a good price, too.

 

If there was such a thing as time travel, I'd love to go back to that warehouse with a tractor-trailer and load it up with some of that rare old stuff before it went on the scrap heap. I could probably make a fortune with it today on eBay.

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