Author: Carey
Date: 16:39:23 09/03/05
I have gotten in contact with a guy who does have a collection of old programs. Unfortunately, he's going to be out of town for serveral weeks, so we'll have to pick up the conversation then. He did however say that he *may* (only *may*, no guarantee!) have: 1) Blitz from 1981 or so. 2) Awit 3) Tinkerbelle & parabelle 4) MacHack VI (executable only. No source.) 5) Chess 3.0 plus a few others. But, we are going to have to contact the authors to get their permission to distribute these things. (Christopher in the pdp-10 newsgroup talked to Mr. Greenblatt and was told that he does think he still has the source for MacHack VI!! If so, that's a heck of a find!!) Old programs that I currently have: 1) Sargon 2) Byte magazine Chess 0.5 3) MacHack VI executable 4) 'Chess' from Unix from 79. (Written by Ken Thompson??) 5) CheckMo-II from 1974. For pdp. 6) a few unnamed chess programs for the PDP 6, 8, and 11. 7) A few mychess executables. 8) Microchess 1 9) Sinclear zx-80 (famous only for its size.) Not really a major collection. (I also have a few commercial ones, such as Sargon 2, Atari 2600 chess, and a few others. But those aren't really suitable for distribution.) So, if you know the location of any of the chess program authors from the late 60's, 1970s, or early 80's, let me know. If you know the author personally, please ask them yourself about the possibility of collection and distributing their old programs. Questions such as that are accepted much better from somebody they know than from a stranger. Programs that would be nice to still find: Tech (1 & 2) Kaissa (not bloody likely!) T.Belle aka TinkerBelle Blitz & CrayBlitz Chess 3.x & 4.x NuChess (aka Chess 5.x) WITA / AWIT Chaos Pawnking MyChess (source, we have plenty of executables) CoKo IV Belle (circuit diagram and program.) And I'm sure there are many more that aren't coming to me right off the top of my head. It's nice if the programs are historically famous, or significant, but actually any chess program from the 60's or mid 70's is historically significant simply due to the age. From the mid 70s to the mid 80's, possibly, but by that time there were lots of programs. People to look for: David Kittenger James Gillogy. Robert Hyatt... (Easy to find...) David Slate Larry Atkin Ken Thompson Dennis Cooper Ed Kozdrowicki And I'm sure there are others who's name I can't think of right off hand. If you know them (either personally or just know where they are at), then ask them.... Remember, questions like these are accepted much better from people they know than from a stranger. And be polite! You might also want to assure them that we have no intention of making fun of their programming skills or anything like that. Many of these programs were done as a hobby in whatever spare time they could find. The programs were written only for their own use, so the quality of the code or comments may not be the best quality. I think all of us have early programs we are embarrased by, so why should they be any different. The only real difference is that they were 'there' back then, they used much more primative systems, and they were sucessful and most of us weren't. It's possible the computer musemu might be interested in this stuff, but we need to collect it first. So, if you can think of any programs that we should try to find, let me know. If you can think of anybody we should contact, let me know. If you know where any of the authors are at, let me know. If you know the authors personally, feel free to ask them. If you have a collection... Let me know. I may not be the best person to be 'in charge', but since there is nobody else even making an effort, I guess it's up to me until somebody better qualified stands up. (Note: I formerly posted as: kaqs.1662 -at- bumpymail I was originally just going to read messages, but since I'm obviously participating, I figured I should go ahead and do a regular name and a slightly more reliable email address. At least I hope it's more reliable... My isp does have a history of overfiltering messages.)
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