Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 12:06:09 09/19/01
Go up one level in this thread
On September 19, 2001 at 13:48:50, J. C. Boco wrote:
>REBEL CENTURY for DOS, the loss of one of our only two positional chess programs
>in the future?
>
>When I started down the path of PC computer chess, I used a Macintosh using the
>only real chess program available, HIARCS. This was (and is) a great program,
>and was pleased that it had a more Human-like playing style.
>
>Fast forward a few years and I now have a Gateway. A tough decision had to be
>made, HIARCS or REBEL? I wanted a Human-like style and these were the only
>choices. I chose REBEL because Ed was working on this program to be the
>strongest against Human players, even though he had to forgo the glory of having
>this program play computers for the SSDF ratings. As a sweetener, REBEL came
>with a database which I could use as an opening book. REBEL was no. 1, HIARCS a
>somewhat close second.
>
>I’m thinking of upgrading my REBEL CENTURY to the latest version, but some news
>has given me pause. I understand that if there is going to be a REBEL CENTURY
>four, it will most likely be in DOS. Century three is in DOS now, of course.
>That’s fine with me, the benefits outweigh DOS. But I’m concerned about the
>newest operating system for Windows coming out soon, which will soon become the
>canonical operating system for most computers.
>
>Will the newest operating system continue to run REBEL CENTURY under DOS? I
>have heard on this forum that the newest operating system will only Emulate DOS?
> Is this true? When I had Macintoshes, I had a PowerPC running a then-new
>HIARCS program which had to emulate the 680XX code, and the result was my 100MHz
>PowerPC chip (then quite fast) ran HIARCS slower than my 20MHz 680XX chip.
>Thankfully, later there was a PowerPC version of HIARCS. It was ported to the
>new chip, and I bought it.
>
>I’m scared that if there is DOS emulation the slowdown of REBEL CENTURY will be
>too much. If so, this program will surely die.
>
>I don’t understand why 100% effort isn’t dedicated to porting Century to
>windows. As I understand it, this positional REBEL program was what made the
>Rebel company what it is today, successful. Is this program not selling as well
>as the newer Tiger and Gandolf programs? If so, then I can understand why there
>are no resources to spend on Century (but I will assert that if this is the
>case, the only reason the newer programs are more lucrative is because Century
>is still in DOS, and that Century would make more money if it were modernized).
>
>Anyway, I hope someone can shed some much needed light into whether the newest
>operating system for windows will only “emulate” DOS, or actually run DOS well.
>Like I said, if it is an emulation, Century will be lost from the hard drives of
>the future.
>
>If this comes to pass, what to do? The only program left that has a Human-like
>playing ability is HIARCS. If there are others please let me know.
I think you don't understand what "emulation" means in this context.
It has nothing to do with the kind of emulation your Mac had to do to execute
68K code. Your Mac was forced to do a lot of work to translate 68K instructions
into its own native PowerPC instructions, thus the HUGE slowdown.
In the case of DOS, the processor's instruction set has not changed. It is still
an x86 compatible processor which is the heart of your PC. The DOS programs will
still run at their full speed.
There will be a few percent of speed lost when the DOS programs will do I/O
(with the display or the disks), because DOS function calls will be translated
on the fly to Windows function calls.
I bet you won't be able to sense any difference in speed between Windows running
a DOS program and a DOS-booted PC running the same program.
So it's not such a big deal. DOS is not dead, it's just another application
provided with Windows. As long as there is Windows, there is DOS available...
Christophe
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.