BSA Starfire

Thanks for the link to the cable pinout. I remember reading somewhere that the AQ was notorious for being picky about it's tape deck, is this true? I'm guessing that if it's cassette handling is a primative as the rest of the machine then it should not care just like the ZX Spectrum. Best, Chris

also any one else noticed how fragile some of the AQ carts are? The plastic pins seem to break for a pastime on the later cart shells, I've just been packing out my carts with card to make the circuit board press forward and lineup. Hopefully I will get a good price offered for making the new shells, I have given an old style shell to the designer/manufacturer for a quote, these seem much more robust. Best, Chris

I use a Tandy/Radio shack tape deck for all my own systems inc the supercharger, they seem one of the most robust machines ever made, mines still going strong since 1982! Did your aquarius come with a tape data lead, i've never owned one and can't seem to find the pin outs. It looks just like a dragon/Co-Co cable but that does not work pity as it would be nice to load all those cassette images from the emulator into the real machine. chris

it's a total classic, me and my son and also one of my staff have been through this game many times. toho studios in video game format. awesome

Hi, another Aquarius owner here, have mini-expander, 4K & 16K Ram packs and half a dzen games including Burgertime. Will add my serials when I get them out of storage. Cheers! Chris

Hi All, Back in March I bought a boxed Inty will a few games from a jumble sale, it was in superb condition and all works a treat, not having the 'net I was stuck with the 3 games I got with it(space war, soccer & auto race) so packed it away. anyhow cutting to the chase in the box was a quantity of speare chips, controller parts etc all are in plastic bags with 'STORES' labels inserted with part no. etc. What I have are: 3x T9001N microchips. 1x AY-3-8900 microchip. 2x BFG 1008 keyboard overlay/membranes. 1x controller cable. 1x power on/off switch. 2x controller discs with 4 of the gold mettalic round inserts. 1x compete controller & cable. My guess is the previous owner worked in the Service Centre and aquired these as spare for later use. Anyhow if anyone needs any of these items I'm up for trades on some Inty games to make the system worth owning, would particularly like a copy of Burgertime. All the best, Chris

Wow I've been absent from the site(& the Internet) for a year or more now and now I'm back look what I find!! It's astonising to see all the incredible interest and work on Aquarius during my absence, amazing. First I'd like to say thank you to Jaybird and all the others for the work & research they have put into the projects for this much maligned machine, I truly never thought that anything like this would happen, well done! I will most certainly be purchasing a Aquaricart when they are available One question, were seperate PAL & NTSC versions of the games released? I'm assuming your cart is running on NTSC machines as you are in the USA. I do have some US/NTSC carts that run happily on my UK/PAL machine so I assume I'll have no problems with the Aquaricart. I truly hope this will be the catalyst for homebrew development in the future, despite the limited hardware I feel much more can be acieved with the little Aquarius. I may be able to help with the cart shell issues also, a good friend and neighbour runs a design house locally with manufacturing capacity(they designed and built the case for Dr Stephen Hawkins computer among many other things). I will show him a cart and see if it may be viable. All the best, Chris

AS above, loads of cool stuff for trade. Chris

As the title says, loads to trade or cash. Chris

OK, like this one These were the games we have from between late 1982 & 1987 or so. Defender Marine Wars. Strategy X. Space Invaders. Galaxians. Pac-Man. Frogger. amidar. Combat. air-Sea Battle. Missile Command. Night Driver. Asteroids. dig Dug. Donkey Kong. Skin Diver. Seaquest. Dragster. Fishing Derby. I can't help thinking I have missed some but these are all I'm sure on for now.

I have a spare Bondi keyboard & puck mouse if you want to pay the shipping. I have a ton of old Mac's too, off the top of my head as they are all in storage: Mac IIci loaded with cards, cache and full ram,quadra 700, LC , LCII, Powermac 6200/75, 7100/66 fully loaded , 6200/275 with all the A/V stuff. Plus stuff at home, Powerbook 540C,powerbook G3 kanga & the Mac Mini that is our main home machine that I am typing on right now

Thanks, you've been incredibly helpful The Burgertime came with the machine I bought ages ago on ebay-UK. The D&D and all the other stuff I got from the gentleman who runs this site: http://www.geekvintage.com/mattel-aquarius.php Has some nice info and images, he was a great person to deal with too. He seems to still have a copy of D&D for trade. Best regards, Chris

Hiya All, Can anyone help me out with a few things on the Mattel Aquarius? I could really use the cassette port pin-outs so I can make up a lead to a standard tape deck(regular jack plugs) so I can save off my BASIC masterpieces Also does anyone have manuals scans for the Dungeons and Dragons & Night Stalker & Snafu games? I finally got hold of the mini-expander & pads a 4K & 16K ram packs and a bunch of games so I'm finally getting some use out of the beast. Quite impressed by Burgertime when you use the mini-expander, the music certainly improves, the pads are OK in the not OK Intellivision way but do benefit from at least being smaller and not having those awful side triggers, anyhow anything is better than trying to play on that keyboard! I do however like the overlays. Snafu also has some funky sound effects when used with the expander. In my opinion it's not a bad little machine, however the mini-expander & 16K ram pack should have been built in at the start rather than as expensive extras, the machine is pretty much useless without them. D&D looks to have potential, but I really need the manual to figure out what is what. Haven't played Tron or Nightstalker much yet but I'm assuming they are much the same as the 2600 versions, guess I'll see. Anyone have spares of Utopia and Astrosmash? Best, Chris

I remember enjoying Speed Devils when I had a DC back then.

I'm 38 and this is exactly how I feel! You could have copied and pasted this from my brain!

I have boxed one for sale or trade. See here:http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=148514&hl=

Prices added

Hi All, Having a clear out to make some space. It all works and if you want pics then please ask Open to offers, I'm in UK so bear in mind shipping charges may be high for large items. systems: Prinztronic Colour Programmable 2000 (Radofin 1292 clone, so i believe) with Grand Prix cart. £10 Sinclair Spectrum 128K +2A with built in tapedeck and REAL keyboard & PSU & RF Cable. £10 Sega Megadrive Mk1 console only. £5 Gakken Frogger Tabletop game. £5 Grandstand Invaders from space handheld electronic game. £5 Boxed complete 520 STE with manuals and software bundle, mouse etc. £15 Gameboy advance console in clear blue(no battery cover). £5 Gameboy Color console in strawberry(no battery cover). £5 Gameboy Pocket in Silver with custom fitted internal backlight. £8 Other Hardware: ZX Spectrum Currah Microspeech with game & utiltiy software & Manual boxed. £10 ZX Spectrum Powerplay Kempston Joystick interface. £5 GBA Games: James Pond Robocod. £3 Rayman Advance. £3 Scooby Doo Mystery Mayhem. £3 GBC Games: R-Type DX. £5 Dragon Warrior 3.£5 Godzilla Monster Wars.£3 Scooby Doo Classic creep caper.£3 Woody woodpecker escape from Buzzards park.£3 Original GB games: Star Wars. £5 Killer Instinct. £3 Super Hunchback. £3 Simpsons Krusty's Fun house. £3 Flintstones King Rock Treasure Island.£3 Atari 8-bit carts. Pac-Man boxed complete(Small silver box version). £5 Flight Simulator 2. £3 Kaboom! £3 Demon attack. £5 Atari 2600. Phaser Patrol Supercharger Tape inlay & case. £3 BattleZone Complete NTSC. £5 Pitfall complete NTSC. £5 Combat complete. £3 ZX Spectrum games: Armaggedon Man, Big box with map. £1 Zoids - complete.£1 Atic Atac complete.£5 Commodore 64. Impossamole, tape complete.£1 Oric1/Atmos. Probe 3 complete.£2 Acorn electron. Felix and the friut monsters tape and case only.£1 Other: Willow for the IBM/Tandy 1000 5 1/4 disks looks brand new! £5

No one got any unloved/unplayed Aquarius stuff languising in a closet then??

Would really like a Mini-expander and the pads for my Mattel Aquarius, also any spare cart games you folks may have up for grabs, I only have Burgertime. I have a load of nice Gameboy stuff for trade here: http://www.atariage.com/forums/index.php?s...=147527&hl= also have a nice clean spare 128K+2 Spectrum with PSU for trade, this is the model with the real keyboard and built-in tape deck so is ready to play. If your after anything specific I may have it so perhaps we can work something out. Best regards, Chris

Where are the swordquest games? Totally unplayable rubbish IMHO. Also defence for Star Ship, it's not better than E.T, but it's masterful in comparison to swordquest.

I have one of these, Al was selling them about 3 years ago for $5 if I remember right. Just use a portable CD player instead of a tape deck and hit play

Star Raiders is the whole reason I own an 8-bit, end of story, superb game

I like it despite only having the NTSC copy over here in PAL land so the colours are wrong(made deciphering the manual more difficult:)). It's different enough from the other Star Raiders clones to be worth a play. IMHO better than Atari's Star Raiders & Imagic's Star Voyager but inferior to Phaser Patrol & Starmaster. But I like Star Ship so what would I know??