Mattel Aquarius
The Aquarius was introduced by Mattel in 1983, and stayed in
production for approximately 9 months. It is a small wedge shaped computer
with blue rubber keys with white letters on them. On the top of the system
there is a single expansion port, which was normally used for program
cartridges. It connected to your television, had 3k of RAM, and booted into
Microsoft BASIC. There were a number of expansion options available for the
system, including a datasette recorder, thermal printer, and a miniexpander
which added additional expansion ports and a pair of joysticks.
When Mattel decided to stop production of it, there were a number
of items on the drawing board, which never saw the light of day. Among
these are an improved computer, dubbed the Aquarius II, and a full sized
expansion chasis that housed items such as disk drives. Once Mattel dropped
the Aquarius from thier line, Radofin Electronics, who designed the system,
took over the rights to it and continued to manufacture it. Though never
put into production, there appear to be a number of Aquarius II systems
actually in existence, as well as prototypes of the Aquarius modem.
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