Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: strongest program

Author: Lenard Spencer

Date: 15:28:29 11/19/00

Go up one level in this thread


On November 18, 2000 at 16:01:36, walter irvin wrote:

>does anyone know  the strongest chess computer was that ran on the 6502 cpu ?

Not sure of the dedicated chess computers, but as far as home computer software,
one that comes to my mind is Martin Bryant's Colossus programs.  I have both
Colossus 3 and Colossus 4 for the Atari XL/XE series computers.  The differences
between the two are (1) C4 offers a (sort-of) 3D view and (2) C4 can also
ponder.  Its speed is impressive given the effective processor speed.  The 8-bit
Ataris are clocked at 1.79 MHz, but with display mapping eating up a
considerable percentage of CPU time, the effective processor speed drops to
around 1.2 MHz.  Even then it searches around 200 to 300 nps.  I remember a
discussion some years back putting its estimated rating somewhere around 1800.
I ran two Atari computers side by side, and with pondering turned off it beat
every other Atari program I had, including the Spracklens' Sargon III and Larry
Atkin's program Chess 7.0, released by Odesta Software.

Maybe someday I might post a small history of old (classic) chess programs
released for the early home computers, if not here (maybe too much bandwidth?)
or on my web page.



This page took 0 seconds to execute

Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700

Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.