Author: Ed Schröder
Date: 11:01:07 12/15/00
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On December 15, 2000 at 12:42:50, Tord Romstad wrote: >I still have an old ChessMachine card left in an old 486 computer in my >parents' house. I still play against it occasionally when I visit them. > >For those who are new to computer chess: The ChessMachine was a add-on >chessplaying card for MS-DOS computers in the early nineties (I think it >was introduced in 1992, but I don't remember excactly). Before the >ChessMachine arrived, the best chess-playing software you could buy were >the very expensive stand-alone Mephisto computers by Richard Lang. With >the arrival of ChessMachine, it was for the first time possible to buy a >really strong chess program for an affordable price. The ChessMachine >consisted of an add-on card with a 16 MHz ARM 2 processor and 512 MB RAM >(a version running at 30 MHz was released later), a beautiful MS-DOS GUI >used for interfacing with the card, and an early version of Rebel (an >early version of the King could be bought separately). > >The advantage of having a card with its own CPU was that the program was >equally strong on all computers --- the speed of the CPU on the host computer >did not matter. You could also let the chess playing program analyse in >the background without slowing down the computer at all. The chess engine >and the UI were both excellent, and the opening book editor was superior to >anything I have seen in more recent chess programs. > >My reason for writing this message is that a successor to the ARM 2 >processor --- the StrongARM --- is used in PocketPC computers and will be >used in future generations of Palm computers. Is there any chance that the >old Rebel for ARM 2 could be made to work with current handheld computers? >Of course, the UI would need to be designed from scratch, but hopefully the >engine should not be very difficult to port. > >Rebel was rather strong (around 2200, I think) even on the 16MHz ARM 2. >On a 200MHz StrongARM, it should be vastly superior to all other handheld >chess programs available ... > >Tord It should be not so difficult to port the engine as the ARM2 is compatible with the StrongARM. I have no plans for Pocket computers at this moment as my first priority is moving Rebel to Windows. Ed
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