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Subject: Re: old and very old programs, colossus chess... sargon...

Author: Larry Griffiths

Date: 21:41:31 01/30/01

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On January 29, 2001 at 18:00:33, Lenard Spencer wrote:

>On January 28, 2001 at 11:14:58, Fernando Villegas wrote:
>
>>Hi T:
>>I also miss Martyn B. and after a long search I located him and I sustained some
>>comunication with him about why he left the field. It happened  a couple of
>>years ago. He said to me that he just got bored of it and prefered to go to
>>checkers field. He thought not enough mone worth the effort was gotten in chess
>>programming. In Checkers he produced some very good programs, but BTW I do not
>>know if there he got the money he wanted. Nevertheless I insisted: maybe he
>>could come back some day. I questioned that and he said "maybe some day. In any
>>case I feel I could tweak for the best almost any current chess program. I have
>>learned many more tricks for that". So maybe some day we will see another
>>Colossus. Yes, Colossus 4 was very good. I runned it in an old Atari and was
>>worth the money. And yes, it was better than Colossus X.
>>Fernando
>
>Ah, yes, the old guard, I remember them well.  I still have my old Atari 800XL
>(a couple of them, in fact) and every now and then I fire up the old programs
>just to remember how it feels to actually WIN a game.  Sargon II, Colossus 3 and
> 4, Chessmaster 2000, Chess 7.0 (Larry Atkin's program distributed by Odesta),
>and several others.  I remember when the Odesta program came out in 1982 it sold
> for US$79, and I got mine in a clearance sale for $20.  Like most all the
>programs of the time, fairly decent in middlegame tactics at longer time
>controls, but somewhat lacking in the endgame....
>
>Those were the days....

They sure were... I have a Sargon book with the source code in assembler... :)

Larry



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