Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 21:37:58 10/18/97
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On October 18, 1997 at 05:00:10, Amir Ban wrote: >There is no reason why a PC-based chess computer should cost much less >than any standard PC notebook, and this means way above $1000. I don't agree with you, Amir. The expensive parts of a notebook are: * the screen and dedicated components * the hard disk drive * the batteries * the floppy disk drive * the keyboard The above represents at least 50% of the price, maybe more, because they are mechanical or sensitive devices. They are all useless for a chess computer. In fact, the only computer part you need in a chess machine is a PC main board with processor and RAM. It does not even have to be low consumption. So you can check the price of such an item in any specialized magazine, provided that you can get it even less expensive if you order a large quantity directly from Taiwan. Maybe the only problem is to adapt a larger ROM set, but some mainboards are designed to accept such a ROM (to include both the program and opening book). Another (small) problem is to build or find a low price power supply (with -12V, 0V, +5V and +12V). You also have to add the plastic case with the chessboard and piece set, a small keyboard and display (design them to allow direct connection to the build-in parallel port of the PC board, or keyboard port, or RS232 port). You get a fast dedicated chess computer (maybe the fastest in the world if you use an AMD K6), for maybe $400 or $500. Then you can set the price to something between $700 and $1000 to make some profits. You can even sell an optional floppy disk drive and external hard disk drive, because the main board already has the needed controlers! I am not in the industry, but I know things could be a little more complicated because of reliability problems, electronic and radio interference, and so on... But here is the idea. Anyway, the main reason why such a device will never be sold is that you can get a PC for roughly the same price, allowing you to do other tasks than just play chess, change the chess program, etc...! The market for a top level dedicated chess machine is maybe too small now to start such a development. - Christophe -
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