Mattel Aquarius BASIC tokenized file
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* [http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/review.php?id=6&mcid=5 Review] | * [http://www.gondolin.org.uk/hchof/review.php?id=6&mcid=5 Review] | ||
* [http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/archive/index.php/t-9063.html Vintage Computer page] | * [http://www.vintage-computer.com/vcforum/archive/index.php/t-9063.html Vintage Computer page] | ||
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Revision as of 03:13, 13 August 2014
The Mattel Aquarius was a short-lived home computer released by Mattel in 1983, and criticized for being more of a 1970s-style computer, out of date at the time. An improved model, the Aquarius II (code-named "Chess" when the earlier model had been code-named "Checkers"), was never released under the Mattel name as that company decided to go out of the computer business; the company that had been contracted to create the computer completed it and manufactured a small number of them, however.
The BASIC programming language was a version of Microsoft BASIC (similarly to a number of other computer models of the time), and presumably used a similar tokenized structure. The specific tokens could vary between different Microsoft BASICs, however. One might be able to determine the token values by running the JSMESS emulation (linked below), choosing "Aquarius BASIC", inputing a program, then peeking at the memory to see the token values. That would require knowing just how to peek at memory; PRINT PEEK(1) gives a cryptic ?FC Error.
Since graphic characters are spread out across the entire 256-character range of the Mattel Aquarius character set, it's also unclear how token values are distinguished from literal characters.
