New Zealand Vintage Computer Forums

Nice Aquarius on Trade Me.

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Vint ... 037176.htm

Looking at NZ Bits and Bytes it seems Dick Smith retailed this for a while.
They were spectaular failures commercially but that in itself makes them somewhat collectible.

Terry (Tez)

Sold $195.50 to the highest bidder. (All boxed, excellent cond - computer, mini-expander, cassette, 16k mem, 3 games)

Similar Aquarius systems sold recently on ebay for dollars US of :

$45 (no boxing, mini expander +2 controllers, 16k mem, 4k mem, boxed Tron, rare Mattel Thermal Transfer Printer
$35 (no boxing, mini-expander +2 controllers, rare Utopia game)
$32 (tatty box for computer, unboxed mini-expander + 2 controllers,5 unboxed carts, incl 16k mem, no tape recorder)
$29 (boxed, 4 games. No bids & unsold)

Guess there's a bit of Marty McFly in all of us.

Wow, there was strong bidding competition for this one. Bad luck!

Terry

I thought about buying it, but looking at the specs it was a machine designed by marketing to be as cheap and crappy as possible. It is not a good example of 80's 8 bit history, just a little rare.
It came with 1.7k of ram accessible, the basic ROM was neutered to not allow for next loops, and to prevent poking or peeking to system areas. It also had no user definable characters and 1 channel sound. I am surprised though given the cheapness of the makers that it had a z80 instead of a 6502

I think what's notable about the Aquarius is that it a supreme example of a "me too!" machine produced at the height of the home computers wars in 1983-1984. Everyone was jumping on the bandwagon and the market was saturated with cheap machines of limited capacity and dubious quality. It only lasted 3 months or so in the marketplace.

It's an interesting historical artifact for this reason.

Terry (Tez)