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Subject: Re: Code of CHESS 4.5 available?

Author: Bo Persson

Date: 08:18:20 06/17/00

Go up one level in this thread


On June 17, 2000 at 01:49:12, Dan Newman wrote:

>On June 17, 2000 at 00:28:34, Oliver Roese wrote:
>
>>On June 16, 2000 at 16:11:15, Bruce Moreland wrote:
>>
>>>On June 16, 2000 at 15:02:31, Oliver Roese wrote:
>>>
>>>>I recall, i saw a printout of horrible quality in a book, some long time ago.
>>>>So i know the code is available for the public. But it seems not to be found on
>>>>the net somehere.
>>>>Or am i wrong here?
>>>>
>>>>Oliver Roese
>>>
>>>Are you talking about Chess 4.5 or Chess 0.9?  Chess 0.9 was in Byte magazine.
>>>
>>>bruce
>>
>>Maybe it was this.
>>The printout i had in mind was in a book, featuring a loose collection of
>>articles, related to programming games.
>>The typeset was of very low quality.
>>The autors appeared prominent, but i dont recall them.
>>It was written in Pascal with a portion of assembler.
>>I will never forget it, due to its strange type system:
>>It defined new names for every type it used. Names consisted of 2 up to 3
>>letters.
>>Apparently the first letter described a concept. The next letter described a
>>subconcept of that and so on, like a catalog in a library.
>>The first typename it defined was AA, the the next name AB and so on up to maybe
>>AI.
>>Then the game continued with BA, BB and so on.
>>Furthermore it defined procedures and functions for  almost _anything_ it did.
>>Procedure accomplishing high level tasks, looked essentially all the same:
>>A long file of procedure calls and assignements
>>Since that i never saw anything comparable to that.
>>So it is definitely interesting.
>>If anyone would have heard of it, that would be fine.
>>
>>Oliver Roese
>
>That sounds a lot like the printout shown in an article in Computer Games I,
>edited by David Levy--bad print quality, short variable names, etc..  It's in
>Pascal too.  The article is called "Creating a Chess Player", and it's by Frey
>and Atkin.  It says this in the text:
>
>    "CHESS 0.5 is a program written in Pascal by Larry Atckin, who is
>    coauthor with David Slate of the world championship computer chess
>    program CHESS 4.6."
>
>So I guess it's not quite CHESS 4.5...  There is also a BYTE article with (as
>I recall) a similarly bad print quality (looks like a bad photocopy of an old
>printout) which may also by by Atkin, but I don't remember that clearly, and
>I can't get at my BYTEs very easily...
>
>-Dan.

Yes, it appeared in BYTE over several issues at the end of 1978. It is also a
good indication of what kind of printers were available at the time.  :-)

To me it looks like a normal quality printout from a high speed drum printer.



Bo Persson
bop@malmo.mail.telia.com






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