Mattel Aquarius Thermal Printer - Model 4210

(Mattel Electronics - June 1983)

The Aquarius Thermal printer was an attempt by Mattel Electronics to add some type of limited output to the system. It was capable of printing onto 4-3/8" wide (111mm) thermal paper... barely big enough to be useful. The paper utilized aluminum oxide for the print, resulting in blue print. One negative side effect of the blue print was that most of the copy machines of the time could not see blue.

While it was good to be able to get hardcopy output from the Aquarius, however the printer carried a hefty price tag... it sold for $5 more than the Aquarius computer itself so most people opted not to purchase one.

The 5x7 dot matrix print head was capable of 40 column printing (ten characters per inch) and was able to print 80 characters of text per second in both upper and lower case or 20 graphic lines per second.

Basic specifications for the Mattel Aquarius printer are listed below.

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