{"id":98578,"date":"2022-10-16T07:04:02","date_gmt":"2022-10-16T07:04:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/aqua-pcb-is-a-big-upgrade-for-the-mattel-aquarius\/"},"modified":"2022-10-16T07:04:02","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T07:04:02","slug":"aqua-pcb-is-a-big-upgrade-for-the-mattel-aquarius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/aqua-pcb-is-a-big-upgrade-for-the-mattel-aquarius\/","title":{"rendered":"Aqua PCB Is A Big Upgrade For The Mattel Aquarius"},"content":{"rendered":"
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In case you weren’t around in the 80s, or you happened to blink, you may have missed the Mattel Aquarius computer. [Nick Bild<\/span>] has a soft spot in his heart for the machine though and built the Aqua cartridge to make the Aquarius into a more usable machine.<\/p>\n

Originally equipped with a mere 4 KB of RAM and a small, rubbery keyboard, it’s not too surprising that the Aquarius only lasted five months on the market. [Nick] decided on the cartridge slot to beef up the specs of this little machine given the small number of expansion ports on the device. Adding 32 KB of RAM certainly gives it a boost, and he also designed an SD card interface called Aqua Write that connects to the Aqua cartridge for easily transferring files from a more modern machine.<\/p>\n

The Aqua Write uses an Arduino Mega 2560 to handle moving data between the SD card and the system’s memory. This is complicated somewhat because a \u201cPLA sits between the Z80 and data bus that XORs data with a software lock code (initialized to a random value on startup).\u201d [Nick<\/span>] gets around this by running a small program to overwrite the lock code to zero after startup.<\/p>\n

Getting data on and off retrocomputers can certainly be a challenge. If you’re trying to get files on or off another old machine, check out this Simple Universal Modem or consider Using a Raspberry Pi as a Virtual Floppy Drive.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In case you weren’t around in the 80s, or you happened to blink, you may have missed the Mattel Aquarius computer. [Nick Bild] has a soft spot in his heart for the machine though and built the Aqua cartridge to make the Aquarius into a more usable machine. Originally equipped with a mere 4 KB …<\/p>\n

Aqua PCB Is A Big Upgrade For The Mattel Aquarius<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":79334,"url":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/barbie-girl-turns-25-aqua-on-the-hit-song-and-greta-gerwigs-movie\/","url_meta":{"origin":98578,"position":0},"title":"‘Barbie Girl’ Turns 25: Aqua on the Hit Song and Greta Gerwig’s Movie","date":"September 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"Helium-pitched vocals and kitschy lyrics made Aqua's \u201cBarbie Girl\u201d a novelty hit for the ages, and the perky euro-pop anthem, which took the world by storm in 1997, is still going strong 25 years later. 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