Author: kaqs.1662@bumpymail.com
Date: 13:13:10 09/01/05
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On September 01, 2005 at 15:28:06, Dann Corbit wrote: >After a huge effort to build these programs, they will play like utter crap >compared to modern programs. > >In addition, they will not have a standardized interface. > >If someone finds the actual card images and JCL for these programs, it would be >nice to have for historical purposes. > >But there is no technical value in their resurrection. There's no technical value in having the Mona Lisa hang in the museum, either. But it is and people go see it. There's no technical value in *anything* that gets put into a museum. But they do. And people go to see it. There's no technical value in restoring a 60 year old car. But people do it. The list goes on and on. Do you keep family photos? Of your parents or grandparents? Why? There's no technical value to it. Do you have pics of your daughter's birthday? Why? There's no technical value to it. You do those things because you want to. Saving old programs isn't about how well they play or what kind of interface they have. It's about preserving computer chess' past. Because I want to. It's fun. I got excitted when I got hold of Sargon a few years ago. It was fun when I saw Chess 0.5 posted on the web. It was excitting when I saw MacHack VI on that pdp site. I understand you don't care about the old programs. That's fine. I'm not requring that you do. But I do care. And I still hope that Mr. Hyatt contacts Mr. Nelson and that he does have a copy of Chess 4.9 And I still hope that a guy in the pdp-10 newsgroup gets hold of Mr. Greenblatt and that he has a copy of the source of MacHack VI. (But I'm not hold my breath on that...) And I still wish I could get hold of Mr. Tony Marsland and get a copy of his collection. And I still wish Mr. Hyatt had a copy of his old Blitz or CrayBlitz. But he doesn't. It'd be fun to run CrayBlitz under a Cray emulator. (Is there a cray emulator?? Don't know.) And I'd like to see the old selective search programs, such as WITA/AWIT and Chaos. The circuit diagram of Belle, and the program that went with it. And so on. I wish I knew more about where to contact the authors of those old programs, but unfortunately, I don't. I have no idea who to contact to see if Kaissa still exists in some archive. True, I care more about source than exeuctables, but when when source isn't available, then the executables will have to do. (And having the executable means knowing how to be able to get it running.) If you don't care, then fine. I'm well aware that most people don't care. But I do care. I care more about the old programs than I do the new ones. I care very little about the new ones, and usually only then because they have source available. (Let's be a little blunt here.... My own stupid program can beat me just as easily as Crafty or Fritz or any of the others can. So there's not much difference between them and my stupid program doing material and mobility.) I still haven't gotten Machack VI to actually run. I'm having too many troubles with the old pdp operating system. But at least I have it. And I have a few other old pdp chess programs from the early 70's. And I have Sargon, Chess 0.5, plus a few executables of Mychess and others from that time. There's no 'technical reason' to do it.
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