Aquarius

When the Keyboard Component project was canceled, Mattel searched in a hurry to produce a small and cheap computer. They contacted Radofin Electronics, based in Honk-Kong, that was manufacturing most of the Intellivision products. Radofin had just developed a line of three Z80 based computers. Mattel decided to sell the two first under their own brand. The Aquarius 1 and 2 were born.

The Mattel Aquarius uses a special version of the Microsoft Basic. When

it was used with Basic, only 1.7 KB was available. There were no re-definable characters, but 256 predefined were available: 128 ASCII (numerals, upper and lower case alphabet, punctuation, symbols) and 128 graphic patterns. That was the only "graphical" feature of the Aquarius!

Unfortunately, the specifications were so poor for a 1983 computer, that the Aquarius "1" literally bombed. Three months after the release, Mattel decided to cancel the project and to sell back the rights and stocks to Radofin. Radofin continued to sell Aquarius 1 & 2 under its own name, but without success...

Cool add-ons were developed for the Aquarius, but they never made it to the shelves. There was a Master Expansion Module equipped with disk drives and expansion slots for future add-ons. It even offered the CP/M compatibility!

Another sympathetic extension was the Home Computer System Command Console, which allowed the Aquarius to directly control up to 255 electric devices. However, when the computer was used with this extension, it can not be used for anything else!

There was also a modem planned and Mattel even announced network services for games and programs downloads...