1 Apr
2008
1 Apr
'08
8:08 p.m.
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang
thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle
of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that
got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er
back up.
____________________________________________________________________________________
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15 Apr
15 Apr
5:53 a.m.
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
One of the earliest ones that I used was called:
CHESS MASTER
Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California
and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it
using a single-density N* controller in my Altair.
It plays a fairly decent game of chess, especially
at the higher levels. Not bad considering it's only
about 5K of 8080 code. It has 5 levels. At level 1,
moves take only a few seconds, at level 5, moves
can take MANY minites.
If you'd like to experience it, you can load it under
my Altair simulator - available on my web site. I've
also included a scan of the documentation in the docs
section. I've also ported it to the H8 where it can be
loaded from tape (simulation also available on my site).
Dave
--
dave06a (at) Dave Dunfield
dunfield (dot) Firmware development services & tools: www.dunfield.com
com Collector of vintage computing equipment:
http://www.classiccmp.org/dunfield/index.html
9:35 a.m.
On 15/04/2008, at 7:53 PM, Dave Dunfield wrote:
I wonder if anyone has pointers to chess programs written in less
common 3G languages? I know of many chess programs in C and Pascal
but what about more interesting languages (BCPL, Algol-*, PL/I etc)?
Huw Davies | e-mail: Huw.Davies at kerberos.davies.net.au
Melbourne | "If soccer was meant to be played in the
Australia | air, the sky would be painted green"
any thoughts
on vintage chess games?
One of the earliest ones that I used was called:
CHESS MASTER
Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California 
10:59 a.m.
Dave Dunfield wrote:
Processor Technology had a chess program. I have the program and manual
on my sol web site (http://www.sol20.org/programs.html, look for
"chess"). The manual was recreated from a xeroxed copy of the original,
sans covers, so if there is a date for the program, I don't know it.
However, there was an errata published 9/78, so the program must predate
that.
Here is a screen capture of a game just in progress:
http://www.sol20.org/screens/chess.gif
I recall a 6502 "microchess," although I never used it. A quick google
shows it was originally written for the KIM-1, using about 1KB of RAM.
It came out in 1976.
http://www.benlo.com/microchess/Kim-1Microchess.html
http://6502.org/source/games/uchess/uchess.htm
and plenty of others.
any thoughts
on vintage chess games?
One of the earliest ones that I used was called:
CHESS MASTER
Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California
and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it
using a single-density N* controller in my Altair. 
11:41 a.m.
I had microchess on my trs-80 model I (on cassette, of course)...one
evening, we few of my friends got together..one of them also had an
Apple II....we had the trs-80 take-on the apple-II in microchess (I
think the Apple won, but I'm not sure).. (we would key one computer's
moves into the other computer as "our" move).
Retro-fun!
-Bob
bbrown at harpercollege.edu #### #### Bob Brown - KB9LFR
Harper Community College ## ## ## Supervisor of Operations
Palatine IL USA #### #### Saved by grace
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org
[mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org] On Behalf Of Jim Battle
Sent: Tuesday, April 15, 2008 9:59 AM
To: General at harpercollege.edu; On-Topic and Off-Topic Posts
Subject: Re: Chess
Dave Dunfield wrote:
Processor Technology had a chess program. I have the program and manual
on my sol web site (http://www.sol20.org/programs.html, look for
"chess"). The manual was recreated from a xeroxed copy of the original,
sans covers, so if there is a date for the program, I don't know it.
However, there was an errata published 9/78, so the program must predate
that.
Here is a screen capture of a game just in progress:
http://www.sol20.org/screens/chess.gif
I recall a 6502 "microchess," although I never used it. A quick google
shows it was originally written for the KIM-1, using about 1KB of RAM.
It came out in 1976.
http://www.benlo.com/microchess/Kim-1Microchess.html
http://6502.org/source/games/uchess/uchess.htm
and plenty of others.
any thoughts
on vintage chess games?
One of the earliest ones that I used was called:
CHESS MASTER
Copyright 1978 by SOFTWARE SPECIALISTS, Norco, California
and sold by Dynacomp for NorthStar DOS. I ran it using a
single-density N* controller in my Altair. 
12:22 p.m.
Chris M wrote:
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang
thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle
of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that
got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er
back up.
have it play chess with a PDP-8 :)
1:34 p.m.
Chris,
Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast
would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in
the "good" ones.
Jim
woodelf wrote:
Chris M wrote:
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang
thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle
of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that
got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er
back up.
have it play chess with a PDP-8 :)
1:56 p.m.
On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net wrote:
Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast
would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon
in the "good" ones.
Jim
Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for GFlops,
Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 "special"
VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed.
-Austin.
4:47 p.m.
--- Austin Pass <austin at ozpass.co.uk> wrote:
Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000
cluster for GFlops,
Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware -
480 "special"
VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed.
Curious what portion of that made up the *processor*
section. I can't say I'd mind looking at a schematic
or block diagram of it's innards.
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6:04 p.m.
Austin Pass wrote:
On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net
wrote:
I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the
boundaries of what a PC is.
Peace... Sridhar
Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast
would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in
the "good" ones.
Jim
Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for GFlops,
Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480 "special" VLSI
chips if Wikipedia is to be believed. 
6:49 p.m.
On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
Austin Pass wrote:
You can get a PC with 32 cores in it right now, which would handily beat
any stack of 30 POWER or POWER2 boxes many many times over. The custom
logic on MCA boards in Deep Blue is another matter completely.
(Eight socket quad core opteron...)
Pat
--
Purdue University Research Computing --- http://www.rcac.purdue.edu/
The Computer Refuge --- http://computer-refuge.org
On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net
wrote:
I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the
boundaries of what a PC is. Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue
emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How
fast would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon
in the "good" ones.
Jim
Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for
GFlops, Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480
"special" VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed.
17 Apr
17 Apr
10:06 a.m.
Patrick Finnegan wrote:
On Tuesday 15 April 2008, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
Which is a very large PC indeed. Far and away waaay above average.
Peace... Sridhar
Austin Pass wrote:
You can get a PC with 32 cores in it right now, which would handily beat
any stack of 30 POWER or POWER2 boxes many many times over. The custom
logic on MCA boards in Deep Blue is another matter completely.
(Eight socket quad core opteron...) On 15 Apr 2008, at 18:34, scheefj at netscape.net
wrote:
I don't know.
One PC? It would be a very large PC. Pushing the
boundaries of what a PC is. Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue
emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How
fast would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon
in the "good" ones.
Jim
Whilst a modern PC would match the 30-node RS/6000 cluster for
GFlops, Deep Blue featured some specialist custom hardware - 480
"special" VLSI chips if Wikipedia is to be believed.
16 Apr
16 Apr
4:02 p.m.
On 15 Apr 2008, at 23:04, Sridhar Ayengar wrote:
I don't know. One PC? It would be a very large
PC. Pushing the
boundaries of what a PC is.
Peace... Sridhar
I don't know Sridhar, PC's are pretty fruity these days.
I know it's like comparing apples and oranges, but Deep Blue sans
specialist chess hardware was rated at 11.38 Gigaflops (Linpack?
Double precision floating point? Only Wikipedia knows.....) My 8 core
MacPro downstairs allegedly churns through 81 GFlops/cpu in Linpack
"Dense Floating Point Operations". A figure often bandied about
regarding double precision floating point Linpack score on the Sony
Playstation 3 is 24 GFlops.
-Austin.
4:42 p.m.
I know it's like comparing apples and oranges, but
Deep Blue sans
specialist chess hardware was rated at 11.38 Gigaflops
...which is pretty meaningless, since (a) much of the speed came from
the custom silicon (it's a bit like saying "without the fancy graphics
hardware my gaming system cranks 15 fps") and (b) chess code normally
doesn't use all that much floating point anyway.
/~\ The ASCII der Mouse
\ / Ribbon Campaign
X Against HTML mouse at rodents.montreal.qc.ca
/ \ Email! 7D C8 61 52 5D E7 2D 39 4E F1 31 3E E8 B3 27 4B
8:28 p.m.
fyi there happens to be a .pdf at the bottom of the
Wiki article describing Deep Blue (31 pages), but no
diagrams of any sort (that would be asking too much I
guess). A bit of code though. And my next question was
going to be what is BB up to these days? It seems such
a waste to let all that computing power sit idle.
Apparently they dismantled it...doodoodoodoo doodoodoodoo
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15 Apr
15 Apr
4:20 p.m.
Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue
emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten years old. How fast
would it be on a modern PC?
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I lose too soon in
the "good" ones.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned MicroChess unless I totally missed it.
Peter Jennings' page:
http://www.benlo.com/microchess/microchess.html
and my own:
http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/microchess.html
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- Seen on hand dryer: "Push button for a message from your congressman." -----
4:23 p.m.
Whoops, a whole punch of Microchess replies. Well, never mind. ^_^;;
--
------------------------------------ personal: http://www.cameronkaiser.com/ --
Cameron Kaiser * Floodgap Systems * www.floodgap.com * ckaiser at floodgap.com
-- If I wanted your opinion, I'd have beaten it out of you. -------------------
4:45 p.m.
--- scheefj at netscape.net wrote:
Chris,
Thoughts on chess games? Would a Deep Blue
emulator/simulator be
vintage? The original computer is more than ten
years old. How fast
would it be on a modern PC
So this thing exists? Zounds.
Somewhere I should have a DOS version of Chess
Master.
I only play using really lousy chess games because I
lose too soon in
the "good" ones.
I just started playing again, and phew do I stink. At
one time I wasn't all bad.
No I guess this has nothing to do with the thread,
and I guess I should have started one concerning board
games in general, but on the topic of Tandy 2000s, a
guy at NASA wrote a Monopoly game for it years ago. I
know no one on this list is going to know what I'm
talking about, much less have an image of it though :(
Jim
woodelf wrote:
____________________________________________________________________________________
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Chris M wrote:
> any thoughts on vintage chess games?
>
> I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000.
Dang
> thing caused a memory parity error right in
the
middle
> of a game once. Luckily it was the parity
chip
that
> got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I
fixed 'er
back up.
have it play chess with a PDP-8 :)
3:53 p.m.
Psion Chess, on the Sinclair QL. Loved the 3D graphics board, even though
the game thrashed me, even on the easiest level...
I don't know how big it was, in size terms, but it all fitted into 128k of
RAM, and onto a 100k microdrive. The only screenshot I can find is here:
http://terdina.net/ql/qchess.gif
And that's on a Mac running a QL emulator...
Amazing how primitive the graphics look now, compared to how advanced they
seemed at the time.
Cheers,
Ade.
-----Original Message-----
From: cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org [mailto:cctalk-bounces at classiccmp.org]
On Behalf Of Chris M
Sent: 02 April 2008 02:08
To: talk
Subject: Chess
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
No virus found in this outgoing message.
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09:26
4:56 p.m.
--- Ade Vickers <javickers at solutionengineers.com>
wrote:
Amazing how primitive the graphics look now,
compared to how advanced they
seemed at the time.
What was that whacked out version for the pc called,
BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ...
____________________________________________________________________________________
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know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. Try it now.
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16 Apr
16 Apr
3:09 a.m.
Chris M wrote:
--- Ade Vickers <javickers at
solutionengineers.com>
wrote:
Yep - Battlechess. And all the pieces got eaten or dismembered in some
manner... I remember playing that in the early '90s, although it's a product
of the late '80s...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Chess
Great game - it'd probably be banned in this day & age :(
Cheers,
Ade.
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Checked by AVG.
Version: 7.5.519 / Virus Database: 269.23.0/1379 - Release Date: 15/04/2008
18:10
Amazing how primitive the graphics look now,
compared to
how advanced
they seemed at the time.
What was that whacked out version for the pc called,
BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ... 
18 Apr
18 Apr
11:15 a.m.
And thusly were the wise words spake by Chris M
--- Ade Vickers <javickers at solutionengineers.com>
wrote:
Don't forget Archon, where you also had to fight the other playing
piece before you could take it.. :)
Cheers,
Bryan
P.S. I also loved Electronic Art's awesome packaging back then!
Amazing how primitive the graphics look now,
compared to how advanced they
seemed at the time.
What was that whacked out version for the pc called,
BattleChess, where the queen got devoured by the rook ...
15 Apr
15 Apr
7:35 p.m.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Chris M" <chrism3667 at yahoo.com>
To: "talk" <cctalk at classiccmp.org>
Sent: Tuesday, April 01, 2008 7:08 PM
Subject: Chess
any thoughts on vintage chess games?
I used to have one for my original Tandy 2000. Dang
thing caused a memory parity error right in the middle
of a game once. Luckily it was the parity chip that
got zonked. I was so proud of myself after I fixed 'er
back up.
____________________________________________________________________________________
You rock. That's why Blockbuster's offering you one month of Blockbuster
Total Access, No Cost.
http://tc.deals.yahoo.com/tc/blockbuster/text5.com
I have about 6 or so different ones in storage right now.
John I
5939
days inactive
5955
days old
22 comments
15 participants
participants (15)
-
austin＠ozpass.co.uk -
bbrown＠harpercollege.edu -
bfranchuk＠jetnet.ab.ca -
bpope＠wordstock.com -
chrism3667＠yahoo.com -
dave06a＠dunfield.com -
frustum＠pacbell.net -
huw.davies＠mail.vsm.com.au -
javickers＠solutionengineers.com -
jrkeys＠concentric.net -
mouse＠Rodents.Montreal.QC.CA -
pat＠computer-refuge.org -
ploopster＠gmail.com -
scheefj＠netscape.net -
spectre＠floodgap.com