On Thu, 1 Jun 2000, Charles P. Hobbs (SoCalTip) wrote:
> http://www.byte.com/art/9509/sec7/art24.htm
Nice little summary article.
>From that:
"Aquarius
Mattel
When Mattel demonstrated this computer at a trade show in 1983, employees
had to conceal one of the keys with masking tape. For some bizarre reason
known only to Matte l engineers, the Aquarius had a convenient key that
instantly rebooted the computer and wiped out all your data."
It was called the RESET key and I hated it. They at least designed a
little ridge around it so it was harder to accidentally press. However, I
remember you could do a CTRL-C or some other control key sequence and
"undo" the RESET (basially it would cancel the reset and put you back
where you just were).
When you first turned the Aquarius on, you had a little intro screen that
said whatever, something like "Mattel Aquarius" ... "Press any key to
continue". When you pressed a key it initialized BASIC and plopped you
into a prompt.
Pressing the RESET key apparently didn't erase the memory but just took
you to the initial startup screen, so it was made possible to back out of
a RESET using the control key sequence.
Sellam International Man of Intrigue and Danger
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Received on Thu Jun 01 2000 - 16:14:54 BST