X68000

The Aquarius was released by Mattel in 1983. It’s working with an Z80A and has a Beeper, which is pretty easy to programm, if you know your way around simple Basic Instructions (I wont explain line numbers now )

Emulation

As you probably dont have a real Aquarius, feel free to use an emulator. I recommend Virtual Aquarius, since AqEmu does not support sound, which makes sound programming pretty useless.

You can grab it from http://www.geocities.com/emucompboy/

If using the Virtual Aquarius, it seems to be pretty CPU hungry, I solved the problem when I went to Configure -> Video and set the screen back to 100%.

Music Programming

Once started, you are already inside the Aquarius Basic and ready to go. There is just one more thing you need to know:

The “SOUND” Command

You can control the Beeper using Basic with the SOUND Command, it works like this:

SOUND (x,y)

x = duration of the sound. Usually something between 5 (short) and 500 (long)
y = frequency, the higher the number, the lower the tone.

The only problem is that the duration depends on the Frequency. C-3 with a duration of 100 will last longer than C-4 with a duration of 100. A bit of trial & error helps.

Example

Frequency Table

A - 494
B - 440
C - 400
D - 380
E - 340
F - 300
G - 265
A - 247
B - 220
C - 197
D - 185
E - 164
F - 147
G - 130
A - 122

The Frequency Table was taken from the Mattel Aquarius FAQ, available here (Link).

That’s it

Btw, this should work with many Basics around, but I have to test those at first. More shall follow.