Author: Robert Hyatt
Date: 20:14:41 08/28/05
Go up one level in this thread
On August 28, 2005 at 20:29:24, kaqs.1662@bumpymail.com wrote: >On August 28, 2005 at 19:56:45, Robert Hyatt wrote: > >>On August 28, 2005 at 12:07:56, kaqs.1662@bumpymail.com wrote: >> >>>Since I have an interest in old chess programs, I was wondering if anybody has >>>ever bothered to disassemble MacHack VI and attempt to recreate the assembly >>>source code? (Or make a modern portable C version of it.) >>> >>>I'd do it myself, but I don't know PDP-6/10 assembly. And it's been a long time >>>since I've disassembled a program and converted it back into readable commented >>>assembly code. >>> >>>It looks like there are still two versions of Machack on the web and I was just >>>wondering if anybody had ever messed with it. >> >>I did years ago. In fact, Greenblatt gave me a copy of the source, somewhere >>around 1976 or so, as I was talking to him about coming to an ACM conference The >>University of Southern Mississippi was hosting. I wanted him to give a talk, >>and we were going to have a mini computer-chess tournament there as well. He >>declined the offer to speak, saying he was not a "good speaker" whatever that >>meant. But he sent me a small dec-tape (if you know what they were) with a copy >>of the source. >> >>Unfortunately, this disappeared so long ago I wouldn't know where to start... > >If you are a pack-rat like me, it probably still exists. > >But it's buried under 6 tons of other stuff and will never be found...[grin] > >I moved recently and finally threw out some stuff I had printed out 20 years >ago.... If I hunted a bit harder, I could probably find stuff older than that. I don't have any of that very old stuff. Threw out tens of thousands of punched cards 20 years ago, along with hundreds of "dec tapes" (the small reels used to ship stuff from PDP to PDP...). Used to have a copy of Coko IV, sent to me by Ed Kozdrowicki also... 100K lines of FORTRAN written in the very early '70s... I'll ask Harry Nelson who might have saved a copy of the chess 4.9 assembly source for the CDC... > > >>I've taught PDP-10 assembly in the past, but the disassembly process and then >>converting that to something that is "readable" is quite a task... > > >Oh yeah!! > >I've done that before. It's not a lot of fun. It can be done, but maaaan it's >a lot of work. > >Back in my old 8 bit micro days, I was disatisified with the disassemblers I had >(which blindly disassembled the code), so I wrote one myself to jump through the >code, look at the data to see if it might be jump tables, etc. etc. > >Even then, it's still a heck of a lot of effort. Main problem is oddball binary constants that can look like an instruction, getting the disassembler "off" and highly confused... > > >> >>> >>> >>>Yes, I know, it's an antique. The play is terrible, etc. But still, it's a >>>classic and that makes it interesting to me. I'd much rather mess with a 20+ >>>year old chess program than a modern one. >>> >>>I'll say it again.... It's a heck of a shame that so many of the classics have >>>disappeared. Tech, TinkerBelle, Blitz, CrayBlitz, AWIT / WITA, Chaos, CoKo, >>>Chess 3/4, etc. (What we need is some of the 'old timers' to step forward and >>>start donating their old programs to a computer chess archive. And then get in >>>touch with the people they used to play against, and see what they have. And so >>>on...) >>> >>>But it looks like MacHack still exists. (Two versions, unless the differences >>>are due to bad tape copies.) Although I don't know PDP os commands etc. to be >>>able to actually try it. >>> >>> >>>I was going over the list of historically significant saved chess programs, and >>>there aren't many. >>> >>>Those with source: >>> >>>Microchess 1 >>>Sargon 1 >>>Chess 0.5 (Atkin, in BYTE.) >>>unnamed program from 79. Prob by Ken Thompson. >>> >>>And that's about it. >>> >>>Of the ones with just executables, >>> >>>Sargon 2 >>>Mychess (cpm, etc.) >>>Machack VI (Possibly....) >>> >>>And I think that's about it for the reasonably significant historic programs. >>> >>> >>>(Plus hardware based chess computers, but I don't know much about them... I >>>wouldn't mind having a few old ones, but I don't have a great intrest in them to >>>spend the cash to do it.)
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