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Subject: Collector's Corner..The Father Of All Wooden Chess Computers

Author: Steve B

Date: 04:03:18 01/10/05


In My opinion the Mephisto Bavaria board was the most magnificent  of all of the
Tournament sized ,wooden ,auto-sensory boards

Similar in size to the Munchen board,it first came on the market in 1989 and was
the first dedicated chess computer to offer full piece recognition.
the board recognized the type of piece and its color via coils in the base of
the piece
the board alone sold for over $2500 when it was first released.

to enter a position for analysis or to start a game with the black pieces from
the bottom of the board, the owner simply had to set up the pieces and begin
play

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=3353&.dnm=dba6.jpg&.src=ph

pawn promotions were handled by special "capped" or wild  pawns
once you promoted the pawn and entered into the keyboard the piece you promoted
to..you used these pawns to continue play:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=3353&.dnm=6f4e.jpg&.src=ph

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=3353&.dnm=4303.jpg&.src=ph

the first Mephisto module that could use the Bavaria board was version 1.04 of
the Portorose program
earlier version's  of the program (v1.01-1.03)as well as all previous Mephisto
modules could not use the board

after the Portorose ,many (but not all )of the Mephisto program modules were
compatible with the Bavaria board
if a module was compatible ,then both the 16 and 32 bit versions would be as
well

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=3353&.dnm=358f.jpg&.src=ph

here My Bavaria is shown in a custuom made wooden case:

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/cpaa2@sbcglobal.net/detail?.dir=3353&.dnm=f08c.jpg&.src=ph

Greetings From Bavaria
Steve



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