Author: Ian Osgood
Date: 09:25:29 09/02/99
Go up one level in this thread
On September 02, 1999 at 11:28:33, Ricardo Gibert wrote: >On September 02, 1999 at 07:50:08, souche wrote: > >>On September 01, 1999 at 17:45:28, Ricardo Gibert wrote: >> >>>On September 01, 1999 at 11:15:04, Trefor Deane wrote: >>> >>>>I have a Casiopea E105 32Mb colour palm PC, can anyone recommend A strong >>>>Windows CE Chess Program that is available on CD Rom, or one that could be >>>>downloaded from the Net. (web address?) >>>> >>>>Thanks >>>> >>>>Trefor. >>> >>>Midnight Chess http://www.midnight-programmers.com/ >>>Pocket Chess http://www.eskimo.com/~scottlu/index.html > > >>>Chess http://www.eskimo.com/~scottlu/index.html >Correction: >Purple Chess http://www.purplesoft.com/ce/palm_ce_chess.htm > > >>>Palm Chess http://www.synctel.com/ >>> >><cut> >> >>>I believe they all have demos, so try them out. Palm Chess is interesting due to >>>its support for PGN. One of the demos is so crippled. It only lets you you play >>>15 moves (Palm Chess?), but I don't remember which one. >>> >>>I hope this helps. >> >>please, post your test (especially strength). Cassiopeia seems having a good >>processor (for handtop) i'm very interested. > >Yes, the Cassiopeia E-100 has a 131mhz VR4121 MIPS processor made by NEC with >16Mb ram, while the E-105 has 32Mb ram ,so they have interesting possibilities >for playing chess. If I remember correctly, the CPU has 24Kb of cache divided >into 2 unequal parts. One for data & one for instructions. You can check the NEC >site for more detailed & more reliable information on the processor. > >There is a review of Purple Chess vs Pocket Chess at >http://5alive.psionking.com/Documents98/battle_of_wills.htm Note however that this test was run on a Psion 5. It uses a 20MHz ARM processor, which is much slower than the Cassiopeia Ricardo is interested in. The Psion products are also earlier versions, so one would expect some engine refinements from the WinCE versions. The confusion is understandable, since both programs are available for WinCE as well as the Psion. As an example of how dependent these programs are on processor speed, compare the strength of PocketChess on the PalmIII (17 MHz) with that of Deep Green on a MessagePad 2000 (160 MHz). These two programs have the same chess engine, but run at very different speeds. Deep Green maintains an over 1800 rating on FICS as NewtonChess. Though Deep Green plays poor positional chess, it is tricky to beat because it searches deep enough to find all the simple tactics. PocketChess on the other hand only plays about 1400-1500 level chess (IMHO). It only holds its own against Deep Green when given 10:1 time odds (as would be expected). On the other hand, having a great eval and writing your search engine in assembly can make up for a lot: the Novag Sapphire II only runs at 32 MHz, yet consistently beats Deep Green at equal time controls. None of these handheld programs currently takes advantage of extra memory for hash tables, as far as I know. They were designed for the lowest common denominator: a cheap PDA with all memory in use. The memory architecture of PDA's is probably a hinderance as well (designed for low power consumption, not fast access). I also would like to see head-to-head results for the aforementioned programs. Note that PalmChess is programmed by Tom Kerrigan of this forum, the engine of Purple Chess was licensed from Oxford Toolworks (?) the home of CSTal, Midnight Chess is reportedly a port of gnuchess, and PocketChess is a refinement of SCP, one of Stanback's early engines. Ian
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