Ron Nelson Ever Copied, Used , Cloned the Spracklen?

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spacious_mind
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Post by spacious_mind »

mclane wrote:
It's hopeless.
It will not end to anything.
Ron says he did grandmaster (that is similar then igor, only igor is press sensory and with voice and sounds) while GM is magnetic.
Still he mentions horvath. What has horvath to do with GM ?
Nothing. Horvath did the computers that say "hello" when you switch them on.

So Ron says A and he says B.

I guess this is called religion.
A believer is not interested in facts but in his believe.
What are you talking about.
Nick
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spacious_mind
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Post by spacious_mind »

mclane wrote: You said so from the first day and I came to similar conclusion by trying to relate the program with other dedicated machines from other programmers,
I could not find any similarity with other programmers work.
GM/Igor plays unique.

It's not horvath nor morsch, kittinger or anyone else I know.
Again what are you talking about.
Nick
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Re: Ron Nelson

Post by ChessChallenger »

spacious_mind wrote:
So if I am reading it correctly the invention of Mirage robot was stateside and not from Krypton originally but they were contracted to build the computer?

I think we can mostly figure out which programs had your 4 bit engine. Some of these would be I assume King Arthur's or Kingmaster II & III or the LCD Model 375's etc, New York Times, Chess Station and some others.

What is still a little unclear are the computers that played in the middle range below Grandmaster but higher play strength than the above mentioned.

These would be Alexandra, Ivan II, Phantom Force Robot, Touch Chess and Deluxe Talking Chess, New York Times Deluxe. These programs play a good game of chess but all lack the ability to think on opponents time. Would these be based around your H8 program but with Ponder removed?

Best regards
The Mirage was completely designed by me state side. Please do not mention Eric in the same sentence as The Mirage.
When Eric White copied my CC10 ROM bit for bit and started selling CC10's in the States made in Hong Kong, I grew a dislike for him. He was stupid enough however to buy them from our Stateside ROM vendor. I called them and said, look they are buying a copy of the ROM you make for us. They looked, they compared and that was the end of Eric White's CC10 in a plastic housing.
He didn't care, it got him into the business. It irked me no end that I had to work with him on producing the Ivan for us in HK.

I never agreed with Sid Samole about the lucrative business possibilities in the high end chess market. I wanted the average Joe consumer chess player or chess player want-a-be's.
The Hitachi H8 was being phased out for masked chip production, but the OTP was still available at a premium but had to be individually programmed.
So I made a huge effort and translated my H8 chess engine to the Sunplus later General Plus SPLB or GPLB series with 6502 core and LCD dot matrix drivers.
I seem to recall it didn't have as much ram as the H8, so I could not use the Attack Bit Map tables. In masked ROM releases you sweat bullets worried that it wouldn't work or had a bug. So I minimized risk, and commented out the call to the Ponder Routine, and knew battery life would double, since the chip went to sleep while the human thought. A better trade off in my system design philosophy.
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Post by ChessChallenger »

steffen wrote:Hello Ron,

thank you so much for your inside information about your life.
I also want to thank you for the very first beginning of our hobby. It´s an honor for all of us, I guess, that you are discussing here with us. Without you no Chess Challenger, the very 1st chess computer, would have existed in this way. The one with the 1st black move 5g5e ;) No-one knows whether Sid would have found a programmer etc.
And this was the start of our hobby. B.t.w., I purchased a Chess Challenger (we call it CC 1 here) from Michael Spracklen some years ago ;)

May I please ask you another question?
Fidelity once sold the Advanced Voice, the Voice, the Sensory Voice (I guess the 1st press sensory board ever) and the Decorator/Grandmaster Voice.
Can you still remember whether the Grandmaster Voice had the same program as the Advanced Voice or Sensory Voice? We´ve led numerous discussions about this in the last years.

Best regards and Merry Christmas to all,
Steffen from Germany
One of the biggest mistakes in my career was not amending my US Patent with my newly "invented" touch chess board.
Invented, ha ha... A salesman walked into my office in Chicago and said we have this new telephone keyboard that is flat. I said can you make it larger and 8x8? He said he would check.
Weeks later he walked in with a sample, and so was born the SCC.

The electronics from the Advanced Talking Chess or VCC as I know it, were built into the Decorator housing for those that wanted a large chess board.

You mentioned the reverse algebraic notation. Here is the story.

I made a sketch of how I wanted Chess Challenger to look. It is on my Facebook page.
But it was a stand alone unit next to a standard chess board. Fidelity's mechanical designer (very very talented, eventually started his own successful company) built it as one unit and but the coordinate graphics on the edges.
I didn't care since in the USA we (I) used P-K4, QxQ notation. When Sid showed it in Europe, NO ONE said anything.
I am sure he did not show it to any European rated players. So that is how it went into production.
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Post by steffen »

Funny story about the CC. Thank you, Ron. Here in Europe even the weakest club player knows this notation. Maybe the people were only sales people without any chess knowledge - or just too polite ;-)
B.t.w., which is your Facebook site, please? Seems interesting to read.
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Post by ChessChallenger »

ChessChallenger wrote:
You mentioned the reverse algebraic notation. Here is the story.

I made a sketch of how I wanted Chess Challenger to look. It is on my Facebook page.
But it was a stand alone unit next to a standard chess board. Fidelity's mechanical designer (very very talented, eventually started his own successful company) built it as one unit and but the coordinate graphics on the edges.
I didn't care since in the USA we (I) used P-K4, QxQ notation. When Sid showed it in Europe, NO ONE said anything.
I am sure he did not show it to any European rated players. So that is how it went into production.
I stand corrected. I looked closely at the prototype photo, it had the correct notation, I think...
Wow...40 years ago. When Sid got back he said he had excellent feedback.
When the mechanical designer went to cost the unit, it was very costly. So he made the ingenious cost effective housing we have come to know. It was then the notation was fixed to the label by his graphics. But I did not care since I had never used algebraic notation in my tournament game playing during my high school years.
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Re: Ron Nelson

Post by spacious_mind »

ChessChallenger wrote:
The Mirage was completely designed by me state side. Please do not mention Eric in the same sentence as The Mirage.
When Eric White copied my CC10 ROM bit for bit and started selling CC10's in the States made in Hong Kong, I grew a dislike for him. He was stupid enough however to buy them from our Stateside ROM vendor. I called them and said, look they are buying a copy of the ROM you make for us. They looked, they compared and that was the end of Eric White's CC10 in a plastic housing.
He didn't care, it got him into the business. It irked me no end that I had to work with him on producing the Ivan for us in HK.
I know you asked me not to mention the unnamed, so I won't but the collector part is getting the better of me now :)

Are you saying that there were Fidelity CC10's sold in the US from Hong Kong made in Hong Kong or the CC10 ROM was used in a foreign manufacturer's computer. Do you happen to recall which computer it was. I can visualize the two below as a possibility:

TRYOM CC-700

Image

or this one:

Westrak CC1

Image

Neither of these two have a known author and were manufactured in 1981.

Best regards
Nick
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Re: Ron Nelson

Post by ChessChallenger »

spacious_mind wrote:
I know you asked me not to mention the unnamed, so I won't but the collector part is getting the better of me now :)

Are you saying that there were Fidelity CC10's sold in the US from Hong Kong made in Hong Kong or the CC10 ROM was used in a foreign manufacturer's computer. Do you happen to recall which computer it was.

Best regards
No sorry. But because it was a duplicate ROM it had to use 16 keys, 4 digit LED display and two LEDs for Check & I Lose. I shouldn't have mentioned it.
The name TRYOM on that photo brings back memories. Tryom was our competitor to my Bridge Challenger. Then they tried to compete with us with a chess game, I guess the one in the photo.

I didn't sign on to this forum for dialogue, just to "clear my name" and defend my accomplishments at Excalibur.

I have a few more things I want to relate, then I will need to withdraw. Too much of reliving the past is not a good thing.
Merry Christmas
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Bryan Whitby
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Post by Bryan Whitby »

Hi Ron
Like the beret your wearing on your Facebook profile photo!
Did you buy it on your holiday to France 😃
Bryan
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Monsieur Plastique
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Re: Ron Nelson

Post by Monsieur Plastique »

ChessChallenger wrote:The Hitachi H8 was being phased out for masked chip production, but the OTP was still available at a premium but had to be individually programmed. So I made a huge effort and translated my H8 chess engine to the Sunplus later General Plus SPLB or GPLB series with 6502 core and LCD dot matrix drivers.
I seem to recall it didn't have as much ram as the H8, so I could not use the Attack Bit Map tables.
I've been sitting on the sidelines avidly reading this thread over the last week. I can honestly say that for me personally, if there was an informational golden nugget par excellence that explains the whole Excalibur story to me personally - and answers my (very long) held questions about various products, then this is it.

I think I can rightly say that I've played more human versus computer games against Excalibur products than almost anyone - I've racked up triple figures 40 in 2 games against these machines over the last decade - everything from the "bean" LCD handhelds right through to the GM.

For personally, I had never been able to fathom why machines created post Mirage / GM were significantly weaker from my own perspective as actual opponents - I have an 80% score against the Alexandra / DTTC type machines yet only a 40% score against the GM. I think my own results reflect the relative ratings I have seen in published and private rating lists for these machines as well.

I knew that many Excalibur machines (such as King Arthur / LCD Talking) were 6502 based however I had relied on technical information from sites such as Schachcomputer.info regarding the "premium" late model machines such as Alexandra, where that website claims the hardware is an H8 only a couple of Mhz slower than the CPU in the GM machine.

http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... _The_Great

That being the (now clearly wrong case), I was never able to reconcile how such a significant difference in playing strength could be attributed "only" to the lack of pondering and a slight speed reduction. This significant difference in playing strength was also why I continued to question the GM authorship (though I hasten to add I was always happy to be corrected), since had all these machines been created by the one party, ostensibly they should have at least delivered a consistent ELO performance over time if the hardware was consistent (after all, I've never known any engine author whose successive engines get weaker over the years on the same hardware).

Your explanation quoted above, however, now makes the whole situation crystal-clear. The differences in playing strength now certainly make sense if the attack tables are excluded, pondering is turned off and the CPU is now 6502 based rather than H8 based.

As for GM authorship, I am certainly happy to have that clarified. I think many will likely form their own opinions now as to whether the inclusion of Belle attack tables and the Kaufmann "consultancy" can be viewed as an intellectual contribution to the products using that engine but at the very least we can all now put to rest the ongoing controversy where other completely unrelated authors, parties and contributors have variously been given credit over the years.

I thank you for your contributions this week to the forum. I can only hope that based on the information you have provided, the many chess computer related websites, will check their Excalibur information and correct it where necessary.

I realise that you are "dropping by" and do not intend to stay, but at the very least perhaps you might be able to peruse the links below and advise what corrections might be made, since many of us have relied on such information over the years. For example:

http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... _The_Great

http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... bur_Mirage

http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... ouch_Chess

I can also see from an earlier post of yours confirming the existence of two versions of Igor - something I already knew about but does not appear to be officially credited on any website that I am aware of (apart from my mentioning of it on this forum a year or two back and other references to this fact by my brother who owned the two types at one point in time).
Last edited by Monsieur Plastique on Thu Dec 24, 2015 9:18 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Fluppio »

Thank you very much for sharing all these stories to us. Especially the list of Excalibur chess computers.

Your programs always had a unique playing style, very tactical. So it is clear Excalibur used other programs (from Kittinger, Horvath) before you came in 11/1/1994, not afterwards.

Merry Christmas!!
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Steve B
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Post by Steve B »

mclane wrote:


You said so from the first day and I came to similar conclusion by trying to relate the program with other dedicated machines from other programmers,
I could not find any similarity with other programmers work.
GM/Igor plays unique.

It's not horvath nor morsch, kittinger or anyone else I know.

i did ...and you did
i was merely recounting discussions i had with Nelson years ago
just repeating what was told to me
you on the other hand came to the correct conclusion based upon analysis of the GM's playing style
a truly splendid accomplishment on your Part
Well Done Regards
Steve
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Post by steffen »

And, Ron, please, final question from my side:
Are the programs used for the Advanced Voice and the Sensory Voice the same?
Thank you :)

And:
The CC 10 was also copied by (former) Eastern Germany. They made a prototype of 12 pieces (I have this number from the former head of the development team Mr. Erdmann Schleinitz) with your program, look here: http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/index.php/SC_1
And what Mike Watters had written: In Bulgaria they produced a clone og the Chess Challenger Voice called IZOT, 1.7 times slower than the original:
http://chesscomputeruk.com/html/izot_u30m_1042c.html
Last edited by steffen on Thu Dec 24, 2015 10:49 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Post by Steve B »

ChessChallenger wrote:

I have a few more things I want to relate, then I will need to withdraw. Too much of reliving the past is not a good thing.
Merry Christmas
Sorry to hear you will soon be leaving us
I guess we can consider your short time with us as a Christmas Gift for 2015

before you go perhaps you can clear up a question that has been puzzling Chess computer collectors since the release of your Chess Challenger in 1977

namely..the method used in the CC1's serial numbering
many attempts have been made to find a pattern in it
since we know that only 1000 were produced there seems too be no real pattern as we see numbers very low and some very high with differences between them far greater then 1000

one theory (which i subscribe to) is that all Fidelity products at that time were numbered in the same sequence
so for example a CC1 coming out of production would get 100334 and the next product coming out(lets say a non-chess computer product) would get number 100335

in later years we know that each new model of chess computer would be given its own unique serial number

is that theory correct??

and finally .. i have a question about the Dual Processor Elite Avante Guarde's
we know there were two versions offered by Fidelity
a dual processor Motorola 68000(model number 6114-5)known as the Version 5(V5)
and a dual processor Motorola 68020 (model number 6117-8 ) known as the Version 8 ( V8 )

i own a V5 and i know of collectors that own one,but i have never seen or know of any collectors that actually own a V8
Do you know if any V8's were actually produced and sold ?

Best Regards
Steve
Last edited by Steve B on Thu Dec 24, 2015 4:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Ron Nelson

Post by Steve B »

Monsieur Plastique wrote:
I knew that many Excalibur machines (such as King Arthur / LCD Talking) were 6502 based however I had relied on technical information from sites such as Schachcomputer.info regarding the "premium" late model machines such as Alexandra, where that website claims the hardware is an H8 only a couple of Mhz slower than the CPU in the GM machine.

http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... _The_Great

That being the (now clearly wrong case),



I can only hope that based on the information you have provided, the many chess computer related websites, will check their Excalibur information and correct it where necessary.

Amazing how so much incorrect information is on the net these days
i wonder what quality control process is in place to post and edit the Wiki?
i mean can just anyone post whatever they want there and then its taken as the gospel?

first person accounts from proven to be Reliable sources ..are the best source of information these days it seems

:wink: Regards
Steve
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