Author: Jim Paul
Date: 17:08:55 09/18/98
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On September 18, 1998 at 16:11:35, John Coffey wrote: >In 1984 I purchased a Novag Super Constellation. Mine quit working a few years >ago. > >What impressed me the most about this program was the strength for its time >considering that it was only running on a 4 mhz 6502. Granted it was no >master, but the USCF gave it a rating of 2018. Those ratings given to >computers were pretty controversial, and may still be controversial today >on newer machines. > >My understanding is that it only evaluated positional ideas at the base of the >search tree. Although that is rather limited, it gave the machine a balance >of positional and tactical strength (for its time) that still probably could >beat most tournament players. It seemed especially strong at speed chess. > >I wonder if anyone has one of these that still work? I would be curious if >it still could hold its rating, and if gets totally crushed by better programs >running on machines that are hundreds of times faster. > >John Coffey I've got an old Novag Constellation 2Mhz machine that I've had for about 13 years. From what I remember it was rated around 1650 in the UK. I played it against Rebel Decade 1.0 on a 386/20Mhz machine about a year ago, here were the results ( I also have the games if you are interested). Rebel played with the permanent brain option off, and the Novag played at L7 which is 3 mins per move. Rebel (5s) 0 - Novag Constellation (L7) 2 Rebel (10s) 1 - Novag Constellation (L7) 4 Rebel (30s) 7 - Novag Constellation (L7) 0 Interesting was the sudden jump in Rebel Decade's performance from 10s to 30s per move. I'm not sure what Decade would be rated on a 386 / 20Mhz machine. Cheers Jim
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