Author: Thorsten Czub
Date: 13:31:51 01/15/98
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Hello Steve, I always had dedicated machines until I found out that the companies are not anymore interested in producing good ones. They don't do it because NOBODY is able to buy expensive chess-computers anymore. Therefore they concentrate on producing very cheap single-chip computers with very weak programs (with exceptions), often compilations of OLD chess-programs (dozens of Frans Morsch clons) and sell them for 100 $, 200 $. This way they can earn some money. I think customers would love strong dedicated machines with modular-concept like Mephisto had it. I remember one very sad situation after championship 1993 whrer HIARCS won the title on SPARC computer. SAITEK had a machine called the Saitek Renaissance Analyst. In these Renaissance the Analyst was a module. Also Saitek had a SPARC module for this machine !!! All they had to do was to bring HIARCS into this module. This would have been an easy job for Mark. And the SPARC module is not that strong due to a few bugs in the software. So the hiarcs-sparc-module would have been a serious concurrent machine for the opc-market 1993 !! There were negotiations to do the deal. But Saitek don't wanted to pay Mark enough money and the deal did not come to a success. THIS was the day I stopped BELIEVING in dedicated-computer-chess-companies. THEY ARE NOT WILLING to sell good dedicated machines that can compete with PC's. From my point of view it IS possible to make strong and competing chess-computers. But they have given up and now feed the mass-market with cheap weak machines sold expensive.
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