So I finally found this thing...now what? (pics)

[sprazzi]

...and i've been told it was a failure too!!!!

 

Found this in a flea market today, now what, fellow aquarians???

Edited March 29, 2015 by sprazzi

[Intymike]

A boxed Kronos. Never seen one before. Sell it for 1 million!

[sprazzi]

A boxed Kronos. Never seen one before. Sell it for 1 million!

well...i don't see it either.... ??? not even now...

[Aquaman]

Get the Aquaricart from Jay

 

http://atariage.com/forums/topic/189033-aquaricart-the-aquarius-album-cartridge/?hl=+aquaricart

[+intvnut]

well...i don't see it either.... ??? not even now...

 

Well this photo says KRONOS EUROPEA...

[sprazzi]

All right! sold to Intymike for a million!

thank you man!

[Intymike]

Do you accept 1 million lire for sentimental reasons?

[jaybird3rd]

Nice-looking system! The Kronos Europea was one of the "regionalized" versions of the Aquarius, which were marketed under different names by vendors in different parts of the world. I believe there was also an Aquarius with an Arabic keyboard and character set, although I've never seen one in person.

[sprazzi]

Do you accept 1 million lire for sentimental reasons?

arf arf!

last time i've checked 1000000 liras were 512 euros )...............

 

edit:

one direct question: is it possible to load roms on this real hardware? how?

Edited March 29, 2015 by sprazzi

[pimpmaul69]

arf arf!

last time i've checked 1000000 liras were 512 euros )...............

 

edit:

one direct question: is it possible to load roms on this real hardware? how?

jaybird's aquaricart has all the roms on it. Its awesome.

[Aquaman]

 

edit:

one direct question: is it possible to load roms on this real hardware? how?

Read the manual

Edited March 29, 2015 by Aquaman

[Intymike]

arf arf!

last time i've checked 1000000 liras were 512 euros )...............

 

 

Still a good price.

[+freewheel]

Found this in a flea market today, now what, fellow aquarians???

 

 

Now you get to enjoy one of the worst personal computers in history.

[dr. kwack]

I have an Aquarius! The only (and I mean only) reason(s) I have kept it are Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Treasure of Tarmin (technically the first licensed D&D "computer" game- if you can call the Aquarius that ). It's actually a very good game! And for nostalgic reasons Tron Deadly Discs. Great artwork on the box, great memories from the day, but only a so-so game. Keep it!

[+Lathe26]

 

Now you get to enjoy one of the worst personal computers in history.

 

I don't know. I hear the graphics on the Altair 8800 were only so-so.

[+freewheel]

 

I don't know. I hear the graphics on the Altair 8800 were only so-so.

 

And if you released the 8800 in 1983, it would certainly look worse

 

The Aquarius would have been an amazing machine in 1975, don't get me wrong.

[+doctorclu]

To me Aquarius was a sad waste. All that effort put into a separate home computer when they could have used that energy for an expansion module (more memory, better basic) for the Intellivision ECS which would have brought better results.

 

Of course though the expansion module was promised for the ECS, didn't hear any talk of a serial port expansion which to me is the only major plus of the Aquarius over the ECS in proposed designs.

 

Edited March 30, 2015 by doctorclu

[Intymike]

A very convincing presentation.

[sprazzi]

well...i had time to test it today and it does work!

 

now i'm trying to port a nintendo64 emulator on it.

 

any idea/suggestion?

[JasonlikesINTV]

I'm no computerologist, but that doesn't sound like it would work.

[+doctorclu]

Does the Aquarius have AV pass through ports? If so you could take a Nintendo 64, patch it through the Aquarius and then connect the AV to the Aquarius and KINDA have Nintendo 64 through your Aquarius. Otherwise, no.

 

Now I could see Nintendo 64 emulating the Aquarius maybe.

 

You know what kills me about the Aquarius is the keyboard wasn't even better than the ECS. If the keyboard was an improvement then having a better mattel keyboard for the ECS might have been something. But no. And the controllers look actually worse than the Intellivision controllers.

 

At least the Aquarius printer and cassette player works with the ECS so that was one bright spot.

[+intvnut]

Does the Aquarius have AV pass through ports? If so you could take a Nintendo 64, patch it through the Aquarius and then connect the AV to the Aquarius and KINDA have Nintendo 64 through your Aquarius. Otherwise, no.

 

Well, someone booted Linux on an 8-bit AVR microcontroller. The crazy guy wrote a simple ARM emulator, and booted ARM Linux on that. You could do the same with the Aquarius, I suppose. The N64 would run probably 1/100000 speed... so 'run' is probably not the right verb. But it would execute.

 

And, you'd need to build a crazy RAM expansion for the Aquarius too....

[+freewheel]

I'm no computerologist, but that doesn't sound like it would work.

 

It absolutely would work, given enough available storage. The Aquarius is Turing-complete, which means it can emulate any other system - the only real issues are a) performance and b) storage (memory). You can deal with b) with all sorts of expansion and paging tricks, which leaves the only problem with a).

 

You may end up taking several days to process a single cycle of an N64, but you absolutely could do it. Imagine a game of Mario 64 that took a few centuries to finish level 1. No pass-through needed; this is computed entirely on the Aquarius - although we'd need to figure out some sort of output display.

 

Basically what intvnut said, but with a mind-blowing slash completely confusing article for those that haven't studied this stuff:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_completeness

Edited March 31, 2015 by freeweed

[JasonlikesINTV]

So could you emulate N64 on Aquarius OS, which is itself emulated on a Pong machine? Like a dream within a dream within a dream? I could only imaging the degree of slowness....like a snail riding a turtle waiting for Rocketeer I kid...

 

Edited March 31, 2015 by JasonlikesINTV

[+freewheel]

So could you emulate N64 on Aquarius OS, which is itself emulated on a Pong machine? Like a dream within a dream within a dream? I could only imaging the degree of slowness....like a snail riding a turtle waiting for Rocketeer I kid...

 

Depends on the PONG machine. An original, I don't believe so. The concept doesn't necessarily translate (although to be fair, I'd have to actually take a deep look at exactly what kind of "logic" could be programmed into one).

 

But you could emulate an N64 on an Aquarius on a Commodore 64 on an Atari 2600. And run an Xbox One emulator in the N64 emulator if you wanted. One frame of game would take about 6000 years to compute, but it's do-able.