Author: Christophe Theron
Date: 15:25:35 11/22/99
Go up one level in this thread
On November 22, 1999 at 04:50:46, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>Posted by Christophe Theron on November 21, 1999 at 14:32:25:
>>
>>Was it better than Sargon II, or just equal?
>
>It was better because Sargon was outplayed by search depth in most
>cases. In that days Rebel was able to look 6 plies deep all very selective
>and much holes involved but very effective playing a program thinking
>just 4 plies deep.
6 plies on a TRS-80 in the time Sargon took to compute 4?
I have the old Sargon II for TRS-80 manual just in front of me. A green manual:
"Hayden computer program tapes, Sargon II: A computer chess program by Dan and
Kathe Spracklen". I have kept it as a souvenir (I also have the cassette, but I
don't dare to open the box).
The manual says that it took 6 minutes (average) to compute to ply depth 4.
You are saying that in 6 minutes you were able to compute to ply depth 6 on a
TRS-80???
If I had known that at that time, I would have immediately given up chess
programming. My TRS-80 was able to compute 3 plies in 6 minutes, and I was
disgusted by Sargon's 4 plies in the same time. Not to talk about Sargon's
superior evaluation...
>>>In the past I have written an Apple IIE emulator for the PC.
>>
>>That's incredible! Did you write it just to run a 6502 Rebel with more
>>comfort, or did you make a standalone product of this emulator?
>
>The emulator was only meant to work for my convenience improving
>Rebel. No Apple 2E hard disk, keyboard or screen support, it only
>emulated my engine.
You mean you were able to run your 6502 binaries on the PC I suppose?
>It was not used very much as the so-called "dedicated computer" market
>collapsed after the introduction of the 80486 as then it was the first
>time producers like Mephisto, Fidelity and Saitek couldn't compete anymore
>regarding raw processor speed as the 486 definitely was superior to the
>chips they were using.
>
>The only exception was TASC who came with the ChessMachine concept and
>therefore was able to compete a bit longer but then when the Pentium
>90 came the hardware superiority once and for all was decided in favor
>of the PC.
>
>Summarizing my conversions:
>- TRS80 (basic)
>- TRS80 (assembler)
>- APPLE 2E (assembler)
>- ARM RISC (assembler)
>- PC (C++)
>- PC (assembler)
>
>Every stage was about 1.5 - 2 years before I was pleased with the results.
>
>I wonder what is next. The upcoming 64-bit of Intel?
Porting to C to take advantage of all the optimizations the modern compilers can
offer I assume.
>>> I can run and old
>>>6502 Rebel on the PC. It's a super fast emulator, speed loss not more than
>>>a factor 2-3 if I remember well. At that time I used it for a while to improve
>>>my 6502 engines because a 386 20 Mhz was much more comfortable than the
>>>Apple IIE at 2 Mhz.
>>>
>>>If I can dig up the thing in 2010 I will give you a very hard time :)
>>
>>At that time you'll have a 1GHz Apple IIe.
>>
>>Check your sources. It would be sad to see you resigning because you get a
>>stack overflow after a 20 plies search! :)
>
>Worse, 16 plies maximum and no hash tables :(
What happened after 16 plies?
>>Be warned that I could have a 2GHz TRS-80 on my side, loaded with 48Kb RAM.
>>That's a serious client! :)
>
>No!
>
>I will ask Jeroen to edit the Tiger book a bit :)
Pah... Maybe you don't even need to do that...
Christophe
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