Author: Matthew Hull
Date: 10:51:26 06/03/05
Go up one level in this thread
On June 03, 2005 at 10:52:40, Robert Hyatt wrote: >On June 02, 2005 at 16:36:55, Matthew Hull wrote: > >>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. >> > >Another issue. CDC was a 60 bit word, and they used their own unique character >set for representing characters, based on a 6 bit encoding. I'd bet that Atkin >did some trick on converting the input into some internal form they could use. >For example, to convert an ASCII zero (0) to binary, just subtract 0x30, or AND >with 0x0F, or whatever. The CDC characters are nowhere near ASCII nor the old >EBCDIC standard. > >I had to use a CDC once to input moves for Cray Blitz, and I had to rewrite the >move input code because the CDC could not handle upper/lowercase whatsoever, yet >Cray Blitz needed Bc4 and the like. I modified the code on the Cray to >recognize UBC4 as "uppercase-B" "lowercase-C" "4" which was a kludge that >worked. Probably you are hung up there somehow... Thanks for the suggestions. I'll definitely see if that's the issue. I'm intrigued now. :) > > > > >> >> >>> >>> >>>> >>>> >>>>> >>>>>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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