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Subject: Re: 1978 Byte Magazine Chess 0.5 Pascal source available

Author: Matthew Hull

Date: 13:36:55 06/02/05

Go up one level in this thread


On June 02, 2005 at 14:38:28, Robert Hyatt wrote:

>On June 01, 2005 at 08:16:06, Matthew Hull wrote:
>
>>On June 01, 2005 at 04:37:04, Stan Arts wrote:
>>
>>>Hi Ian, thanks for the link.
>>>
>>>It seems like a large (and unreadable) program for it's day. (before my time,
>>>i wasn't even born yet.)
>>>
>>>Is there a working executable available? (Can't get it to work with FreePascal,
>>>because of those intra-procedure goto's. ..but can hardly blame a compiler for
>>>that. Procedure parameters are still modern though in Pascal, if we mean the
>>>same.)
>>
>>
>>Got it compiled with gpc (GNU pascal compiler) and it "runs", but the move
>>syntax is some kind of screwed up descriptive notation.  It could be the OCR
>>process made some workable typos or some of the program is missing.  You can't
>>actually enter a valid move, so it makes a move for you.  It moves instantly and
>>you can't tell if it is doing any kind of meaningful search.  There is no
>>obvious command table.
>>
>>I can't make heads or tails of it.  One would need to study it a little to fix
>>it up.
>>
>>
>
>One point.  Back when that was written and published in Byte, the common move
>input format was "English Descriptive".  The old P-K4, N-KB3, kind of move
>syntax, and it probably would not accept lowercase either...  :)


I figured that out pretty quickly as it gave moves in that format.  Also,
someone posted a useful README file which provided code corrections for
lowercase and ASCII board representation.  However, there still seems to be a
bug that prevents it from parsing user supplied moves, so it assumes you want it
to make a move for you, which it does.  I've never been able to enter a move
successfully.  It's probably easily solved, though.   But I might rather study a
more modern program.

It is cool, though.



>
>
>>
>>
>>>
>>>Greetings
>>>Stan
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>On May 31, 2005 at 21:30:22, Ian Osgood wrote:
>>>
>>>>Over on news:comp.lang.pascal, someone has unearthed the Peter Frey and Larry
>>>>Atkin Chess 0.5 source that was published in Byte Magazine back in 1978.
>>>>They've OCRed the source and managed to get it running on the GNU Pascal
>>>>compiler (which still supports that ancient ISO Pascal dialect, including
>>>>procedure parameters and intra-procedure gotos[?!]).
>>>>
>>>>Might be an interesting walk down memory lane...
>>>>
>>>>http://www.moorecad.com/standardpascal/misc.html
>>>>
>>>>Ian



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