Author: John Alfred
Date: 05:00:51 08/16/01
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On August 15, 2001 at 23:38:11, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On August 14, 2001 at 13:01:13, Roy Eassa wrote: > >>On August 14, 2001 at 07:40:47, John Alfred wrote: >> >>>Do you know of any attempts by anyone at a chess coprocessor daughterboard? >>>(apart from anything to do with Deep Blue) >>> >> >>There was a device called "The Chess Machine" that was sold as an ISA card for >>the PC. You ran a special app and this card "took over", essentially replacing >>your main CPU for the duration of your chess play/study. It had a nice >>mouse-based GUI and loads of features, and played quite well for its time (back >>in the DOS days). Its claim to fame was that it could turn a slow PC (e.g., >>PC-XT) into a strong chess program, and it lived up to that. As PC CPUs got >>faster, the Chess Machine lost its market and got quite cheap. >> >>I'm sure that's not exactly what you asked, but I wonder if somebody could pull >>the same (or similar -- true coprocessor?) trick off today, in a world with 1.5+ >>GHz main CPUs. > > >There used to be a guy on ICC running a program named "big blue" I think. It >was a 1978 version of Blitz (prior to Cray Blitz, and yes, I distributed source >back then too...) He was a graphics card designer and was using a graphics >card designed for SGI to run Blitz on in hardware. It was pretty fast (probably >10x faster than Crafty at that particular hardware time) but the 1978 program >was really pretty out-dated (no null-move, etc). But it was very strong and >gave many programs a lot of trouble, mine included, just because of the speed. >(Blitz was not "dumb" but it wasn't near today's programs in strength, of >course). But with that speed advantage, it was very dangerous. > >He disappeared a long while back and I haven't heard from him since. But it >was pretty amazing the first time I noticed him playing Crafty and seeing his >finger notes mention "Hyatt, Blitz, and 1978". :) Hi Bob, Thanks for the info. Has the effect of 'Null-move' been quantified on change of a program's performance in terms of Elo rating? Excuse my lack of knowledge, but what is ICC? Thanks in advance - John
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