Computer Chess Club Archives


Search

Terms

Messages

Subject: Re: 1k chess programs!

Author: William H Rogers

Date: 07:44:55 05/17/01

Go up one level in this thread


On May 16, 2001 at 18:34:19, Matthew Barnett wrote:

>Whilst I was surfing I found http://www.the5k.org where there are 3 chess
>programs of 5k each...
>
>Which reminded me of the early 1980s when there was a 'home' computer called the
>Sinclair ZX81 which came with only 1k as its memory - those were the days!  (You
>could of course add more memory, I think up to a whopping 16k.)  You could
>'enjoy' a game of chess on your ZX81 1k machine -
>http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/ (I think this program actually
>takes up less than 1k.)  I also seem to remember a similar sized commercial
>chess program, although these two could be one and the same.
>
>Small may not be beautiful or offer a good chess game, but you've got to admire
>the ingenuity of these guys when working under these kinds of contingencies.
>
>I wonder how low it's possible to go...?
>
>;)

The very first chess program written for a 'pc' was MicroChess by Peter
Jennings. It was first written for a hand held computer and later rewritten for
the TRS-80, Apple and the Commadore computers. In the TRS-80 the program grew to
4k as it had to support graphics. It was a three ply max program that did not
castle legally and was only rated at about 600 by leading chess players.
It was also the first chess program to sell over 1 million copies in the history
of the world.
Bill





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.