Aquarius Home Computer System

[Adimar Poynter]

Aquariusis a home computer designed by Radofin and released by Mattel Electronics in 1983. Based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor, the system has a rubber chiclet keyboard, 4K of RAM, and a subset of Microsoft BASIC in ROM. It connects to a television set for audiovisual output, and uses a cassette tape recorder for secondary data storage. A limited number of peripherals, such as a 40-column thermal printer, a 4-color printer/plotter, and a 300 baud modem, were released. The Aquarius was discontinued in October 1983, only a few months after it was launched.

Looking to compete in the home computer market, Mattel Electronics turned to Radofin, the Hong Kong based manufacturer of their Intellivision consoles. Radofin had designed two computer systems. Internally they were known as "Checkers" and the more sophisticated "Chess". Mattel contracted for these to become the Aquarius and Aquarius II, respectively.[2]

The Aquarius was often bundled with the Mini-Expander peripheral, which added game pads, an additional cartridge port for memory expansion, and the General Instrument AY-3-8910 sound chip. Other peripherals were the Data recorder, 40 column thermal printer, 4K and 16K RAM carts. Less common first party peripherals include a 300 baud cartridge modem, 32k RAM cart, 4 color plotter, and Quick Disk drive.

Although less expensive than the TI-99/4A and VIC-20, the Aquarius had comparatively weak graphics and limited memory. Internally, Mattel programmers adopted Bob Del Principe's mock slogan, "Aquarius -a system for the seventies".[3] Of the 32 software titles Mattel announced for the unit, only 21 were released, most of which were ports of Intellivision games. Because of the hardware limitations of the Aquarius, the quality of many games suffered. There was such a lack of programmable graphics that Mattel added a special character set (see Character set section), so the games could at least use semigraphics.

Despite its relatively short time on the market, Mattel Electronics and Radofin managed to have most of the announced peripherals available within a month or so of the release of the system. Some products never materialized beyond prototype phase, and some were available only in specific markets. Beginning in 2016, new user-designed peripherals began to show up, mostly on eBay or on vintage computer forums such as AtariAge.

The Aquarius manual did not contain details of any of the ports available. The cassette port, although using the same 5-Pin DIN 41524 connector as the TRS-80, did not have the same pin out and thus was incompatible with readily available cables for the TRS-80, even though they physically fit the sockets on both the computer and cassette player. The Aquarius branded cassette deck came with the appropriate cable.[8]

The printer interface is a mini-stereo socket with 3 lines, the same as on the Mattel Entertainment Computer System. The Aquarius printers came with their own cables. The interface conforms to RS-232 serial signal standards (+12VDC/-12VDC), with the knowledge of the pinout it is possible to interface printers with a corresponding RS-232 interface.[8] The serial is fixed to 1200 baud 8N2 and provided both carriage return and line feed commands to the printer, thus the printer needed to be set to not auto feed with carriage return.[8]

Typical serial printers had DB-25 interfaces; some had DE-9 interfaces; and, some Radio Shack (RS) printers had round 4-pin female DIN connector serial interfaces (with the pin sockets numbered left-to-right: 4, 3, 2, 1). The proper cable for connecting such a printer is as follows:[8]

Mattel Aquarius Home ComputerIntroI have bought the Aquarius computer somewhere in 1985. In the Netherlands thesystem was distributed by Dunnet, who also provided a nicely translated (dutch) guide. The Aquarius was sold in several stores and good available. Even my next-door neighbour owned an Aquarius. In my quest in gathering more information and getting in touch with other Aquarius-users I joined the Hobby Computer Club (HCC). The HCC had several different usergroups and the Aquarius group was one of them. Unfortunattely it died an early death. But another usergroup rised: The Aquarius users, maintained by van Balen uitgeverij. I joined in when the group was already in progress but was able to get some technical information, hardware and software from this group.

The Mattel Aquarius was the first and only genuine home computer offered by Mattel Electronics. Mattel did not start by designing a computer. It instead began by looking around for a pre-made computer system it could market under its name. It discovered that one of its manufacturing partners, the Hong Kong based Radofin Electronics Far East, had already designed a three-system line of home computers. All Mattel had to do was secure the U.S. marketing rights, which it promptly did for the first two units in the line, and have Radofin handle the manufacturing.

The simplest unit, originally code-named "Checkers" and which was eventually named the Aquarius (Model #5931), did have some good things going for it. The 13.5 x 6 x 2 inch unit was equipped with the same Z-80A microprocessor used in many other home and business computers of the era; it had built-in BASIC, being a subset of full Microsoft BASIC; it had the ability to utilize cartridge-based games and other software; and, it had a color video display (16 foreground and 16 background colors, with 40 character x 24 line text). But it also featured a mere 4K of RAM (along with its 8K of ROM) with only about 1.7K free for BASIC programs, a "chicklet" keyboard with just 48 keys and a reset button, a one-voice tone generator for sound, no programmable graphics, no sprites, no game controllers, no monitor port (it attached to a TV only), a non-standard printer interface, ordinary cassette access at 600 baud, and no expansion capability except for what could be plugged into the cartridge port. Given that the unit was introduced in 1983, these features did not make it strongly competitive in the home computer market. The Mattel programmers dubbed the Aquarius as "the system for the Seventies!".

In its defense, Mattel did recognize some of the problems. Mattel added a larger character set to the original Radofin design, so that games could use character graphics. Mattel made several sizes of memory add-on cartridges. It produced a "mini-expander", which at least brought three-voice sound to the Aquarius, added two game controllers, and allowed both a memory cartridge and a program cartridge to be plugged in at the same time. And Mattel was working not only on other gizmos for the Aquarius (such as a larger expander which would allow disk drives), but also on the intended successor unit, originally code-named "Chess" and called publicly the Aquarius II (Model #4000), which would have had more memory, a full stroke keyboard, and hi-res graphics capability (character resolution of 320x196). However, the initial failure of the Aquarius was such that it was discontinued almost as soon as it hit store shelves ("One of the shortest lifespans of any computer", according to the April '85 issue of COMPUTE! magazine). Hardware development stopped within Mattel Electronics in mid-1983, and the company was shut down at the beginning of 1984. Radofin was paid to take the Aquarius marketing rights back.

As per January 1st, Radofin officially took over the Aquarius again. Radofin got the unsold stock and all marketing rights. Confident in their system, Radofin's president, Lawrence M. Scott, Jr., announced that they would continue to sell Aquarius through a new distributor, and would release Aquarius II in March of 1984 and Aquarius III in July.

The "Mattel Electronics" logo was removed from the casing, the boxes and the manuals. Also all references to the Mattel name were removed from the ID label on the bottom of the machine.

Aquarius by Mattel ElectronicsAquarius by Radofin

Radofin Electronics manufactured the Aquarius for almost two more years, using different brand names to target local markets, like the Kronos Europea. A small amount of the Aquarius II have been manufactured, but the Aquarius III never made it.

HISTORY OF HOME AND GAME COMPUTERS

The BeginningAtari's PongMagnavox Odyssey Home ComputersCommodore SX-64MattelAquariusPhilips P2000RobotronZ1013Sinclair ZX80Sinclair ZX81SinclairZX SpectrumSinclairZX Spectrum PlusSinclairZX Spectrum 128TexasInstruments 99/4TexasInstruments 99/4a Game ConsolesAtari's Home PongMattelIntellivisionPhilipsVideopac G7000Vectrex Navigator

Many prototypes

As a consequence of the bizarre history of the Aquarius computers, many extensions which were announced hardly appeared on the shelves or never became more than a prototype. An example is the Master Expansion Module. According to employees, only the cases of the module were ever manufactured. The Master Expansion Module should have contained two floppy drives and should facilitate the use of CP/M.

Causes of failure

The main cause for the failure of the Mattel Aquarius is most probably that it halted between two opinions. The developers had hoped to make a combination between a game console and a home computer, but in both respects it performed terribly. Hold your breath: which follows is a long list of mistakes. Expensive extensions

Indeed, the Aquarius had 4K of RAM at its disposal, but in fact the consumercould only use 1,7 K. Needless to say that this amount of RAM was fairlyuseless. In this way, working with the word processor Fileform which Mattel soldon a cartridge, was almost impossible. Unless the user was prepared to storeparagraphs again and again on tape or print them on paper.

In an attempt to compensate this, Mattel Electronics sold various comparativelyexpensive extension options. Examples are the 4K and 16 K RAM memory expansions;cartridges which could be plugged into the Aquarius. Besides that, there was theso-called Mini Expander that could be attached to the computer. With the MiniExpander - almost taller then the tender Aquarius itself - you could use twocartridges at the same time (e.g. RAM-extension and a game). It gave theAquarius also two extra sound channels and two Intellivision-like controllers forplaying games.

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