News

17 Feb 09       Site salvaged from Wayback Server and re-hosted on Retro-Zone.Org

26 Jun 99       Added Stockpile page.

12 Jun 99      Modem added to Prototypes page!  Guestbook added; please sign.  Manuals page added.

30 May 99    This page finally taking shape!  Prototypes page finished!

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The Stock Pile

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Intro

If you are new to the Aquarius world, I highly reccomend you start out by visiting the Blue Sky Rangers' web page.  They are the actual Mattel programmers who gave us most of the software for the Aquarius.  They provide an excellent history and commentary of the Aquarius.

Welcomes and Whys

Welcome to the juggernaut of Aquarius web pages. I created this page to be a resource of information about the Aquarius Home Computer. Why do I care about this old machine? Well, the Aquarius was the first computer I had. My parents gave it to me for Christmas back in '83. Over the course of a few years, I aquired a bunch of accessories for the Aquarius -even the 300 baud modem! I learned to do a bit of programming, even making a simple game called a very non politically correct "Jap Attack"  (The game consisted of your little tank on the bottom of the screen trying to shoot an ever encroaching airplane. You were treated to a "spectacular" explosion if you got him.  I will give it a new 90's name of "Asian Invasion")  Stupidly, I sold my Aquarius sometime between '87 and '88 in order to purchase a Tandy COCO III and a Nintendo. I ended up loving the Tandy, so I guess it wasn't a total loss.

I just recently rediscovered my love for the old Aquarius, when I spotted some for sale on Ebay. I started snapping up as much as I could, as cheaply as I could. After scouring the web for anything Aquarius, I came across a small page made by a collector named Andrew Davie. Amazingly he listed several items he had for the Aquarius which I never dreamed made it past the "Coming in late 1984" death knell attached to them in the ads from Mattel Electronics. Most spectacularly, he had the disk drive and the Aquarius II. I was shocked! After many emails and metaphorically prying his clutched hands off his treasure, he agreed to release them to me.

My feelings on the Aquarius: Now I know this is contrary to my enthusiasm which I show toward this computer, but it really is a dog. The graphics abilities are among the very lowest of computers released in '83. The keyboard speaks for itself. There were only 1781 bytes of RAM available without an upgrade. It has only RF output. Perhaps most importantly, it is very difficult to do anything "productive" with the Aquarius. Yes, there is a spreadsheet, and a *very* simple database/word processing program, but that is about it for productivity. (of course, when I was younger, I considered making a program to have the computer count to 1million on screen for 8 hours as VERY productive ;-) Still, this machine taught me a lot in my younger years. I knew what a "variable" was years before we hit algebra in school. I was (am) hooked on this little machine. I felt like I could make it do anything (non productive, that is) I wanted to with a little determination. It was the best Christmas present ever to a 5th grader.

My goal for this page is to pay homage to that little dog of computer which I hold in such high nostalgic regard. All Aquarius items I have will be featured, displayed and discussed. I invite any comments you may have for me regarding this machine. I know there are Aquarius enthusiasts out there, because I see you out-bidding me on Ebay! Welcome. I hope you get something out of this page!

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The Stock Pile

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