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Subject: Re: Good old days, early '80s

Author: Fernando Villegas

Date: 10:21:36 11/26/99

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On November 26, 1999 at 12:45:37, Roy Brunjes wrote:

>Christophe,
>
>You may want to look for some programmers from Russia in the 80's (not even
>early 80's necessarily).  At that time, Russian programmers had access to only
>the very oldest (and therefore slowest) hardware from the west.  Their
>scientific programmers were VERY creative as a result and some companies in the
>early 90's hired them for their programming abilities (very creative algorithms
>to make up for slow hardware).  I do not know if there were any Russian chess
>programmers out there as well, though given their culture's strong interest in
>chess, I would think some programmers were active in chess programming.
>
>Worth a try maybe.
>
>Roy


You are right. BTW, are'nt you the father of a chess program? I believe I
downloaded once  one made by you, but I am not sure. iT was a demo uncapable of
playing. Also not sure abut that. I was disapointed. Not sure, either...Maybe if
you are that guy could deliver something we could test and see?
fernando

>On November 25, 1999 at 04:13:58, Bas Hamstra wrote:
>
>>On November 24, 1999 at 00:02:02, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>
>>>On November 23, 1999 at 22:53:11, Dave Gomboc wrote:
>>>
>>>>On November 23, 1999 at 11:59:46, Christophe Theron wrote:
>>>>
>>>>>On November 23, 1999 at 03:54:48, Ed Schröder wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>>>Posted by Christophe Theron on November 22, 1999 at 18:25:35:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>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???
>>>>>>
>>>>>>6 plies indeed all very selective but a friend of mine had doubled the
>>>>>>processor speed from 1.77 Mhz to 3.5 Mhz. On standard 1.77 Mhz Rebel on
>>>>>>40/120 was only able to compute 4 plies and some moves on 6 plies.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>The first Rebel was a strange animal. I had to re-invent the wheel
>>>>>>completely as I had no access to documentation, I wasn't even aware
>>>>>>documentation existed.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>No alpha/beta, no windows, no Q-search, the program could only think
>>>>>>in steps of 2 plies. Thus 2,4,6,8 etc.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>???
>>>>>
>>>>>How did it work? Why the always even depth?
>>>>
>>>>Maybe he had a big odd/even effect.  Funny that he didn't choose 1, 3, 5, 7 ...
>>>>though.
>>>>
>>>>Dave
>>>
>>>
>>>From the text I understood it was a search issue. But I don't see why, that's
>>>why I ask...
>>>
>>>The reason I'm interested in this is that in the early days of computer chess
>>>programming, people did not know what were the efficient ways to do it. So they
>>>tried to invent their own algorithms.
>>>
>>>Some of them are maybe the future of chess programming.
>>>
>>>That was one of my objections to the Crafty or GnuChess project. Reinventing the
>>>wheel IS fun. Today many chess programs are almost identical. Where is all that
>>>creativity gone?
>>>
>>>God. I'm speaking like Chris W. now!
>>>
>>>I like to hear about exotic algorithms designed at the time when the computers
>>>were very slow.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>    Christophe



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