Ron Nelson Ever Copied, Used , Cloned the Spracklen?

This forum is for general discussions and questions, including Collectors Corner and anything to do with Computer chess.

Moderators: Harvey Williamson, Steve B, Watchman

Forum rules
This textbox is used to restore diagrams posted with the fen tag before the upgrade.
Post Reply
User avatar
Fernando
Admiral of the Fleet
Posts: 3059
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:35 pm
Location: Santiago de Chile

Ron Nelson Ever Copied, Used , Cloned the Spracklen?

Post by Fernando »

The last bath of engines that Ron Nelson produced for Excalibur, all the series including Alexandra, Ivan etc, were clearly much stronger than the original harvest of Ron, say, CC3, CC10, CC7, Voice, etc, and even stronger than the first machines produce by the Spracklen for Fidelity, say, chess champion sensory, elite, etc....
Now, which could be the secret of that?
Maybe simply Ron just learned the new techniques that were developed trough the years and that are a commodity these days.
Or...
maybe he made use of the codes of the Spracklen, with or without some extra things coming from that development.
I suppose the codes the Spracklen produced were owned by Fidelity and so, after its demise, by Excalibur.
I have had this suspicions due to certain moves the last Nelson bath play that are equally to what champion played in similar positions AND that you does not find in contemporary engines. One of those old fashion moves is, when the program has nothing to do in his opinion, King from g1 to h1.......
What do you think?

Fern
Festina Lente
Larry
Senior Member
Posts: 2269
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 8:42 am
Location: Gosford, NSW Australia

Post by Larry »

Referring to www.schachcomputer.info I see that no programmer is
named for the Excalibur programs you mention. But since you notice
similarities in moves it's safe to assume the Spraklen code is at least
included. I have also noticed in the Spraklen programs pointless king
moves when it can't find a move.
L
User avatar
Steve B
Site Admin
Posts: 10140
Joined: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:02 am
Location: New York City USofA
Contact:

Post by Steve B »

Larry wrote:Referring to www.schachcomputer.info I see that no programmer is
named for the Excalibur programs you mention. But since you notice
similarities in moves it's safe to assume the Spraklen code is at least
included. I have also noticed in the Spraklen programs pointless king
moves when it can't find a move.
L
Ron Nelson told me personslly years ago that he was the only programmer for Excalibur
he programed every single one of their computers
LED Chess
Grandmaster
Mirage
Ivan...ALexandra
King Arthur...etc..etc

this of course does not include the few chess computers they sold that were really re-badged computers from other company's like the Karpov 2254

whether or not he used Spracklen left over code or not i cannot say
but i would tend to doubt it
i imagine his later programs were stronger then his earlier programs because the hardware used in the later ones was much stronger\faster

Nelson was Excalibur Regards
Steve
Mike Watters
Member
Posts: 429
Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:31 pm
Location: Milton Keynes
Contact:

Post by Mike Watters »

By the mid 1990s the programs of some company's chess computers had become corporate property much modified by in-house and contract programmers. Quite difficult to trace who was responsible for what, from the outside. There comes a point where it might not make much sense to attribute the end results to particular chess programmers.

I have always been sceptical about the source of Excalibur programs without having the slightest evidence.
User avatar
Steve B
Site Admin
Posts: 10140
Joined: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:02 am
Location: New York City USofA
Contact:

Post by Steve B »

Mike Watters wrote:By the mid 1990s the programs of some company's chess computers had become corporate property much modified by in-house and contract programmers. Quite difficult to trace who was responsible for what, from the outside. There comes a point where it might not make much sense to attribute the end results to particular chess programmers.

I have always been sceptical about the source of Excalibur programs without having the slightest evidence.
well i guess by evidence you mean something to point to on the net?
thats how it is these days..
if there is no link on the net ..its not provable
believe what you like Mike
Nelson took full credit for every Excalibur program to me personally
im comfortable with it
there would be no reason for me to say this if he didnt

Past This Issue Regards
Steve
User avatar
spacious_mind
Senior Member
Posts: 4000
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:20 pm
Location: Alabama
Contact:

Post by spacious_mind »

I lean to agreeing with Mike's comments. It seems that Excalibur made their start by first of all marketing CXG and Krypton products both made in China. Krypton seems to be a Brand Name that still belongs to Year Vantage Holdings together with their other Brand Names RYO and Braingames.

Before China became more Westernized it was impossible to direct do business with factories in China, you either had to go through their local Embassies which would arrange meetings for you or even easier get your connections built through Hong Kong. Hence so many products were branded through Hong Kong in the past and probably still today.

So if you look at CXG and Krypton more closely you have all the nucleus for the beginning of the Excalibur brand:

Krypton Regency, Challenge, Jupiter, Pioneer, Crusader, Comet, Alpha, etc etc..

All these are the nucleus on which Excalibur was based on.

Crusader = Excalibur Crusader, which morphed into Saber III & 4.
Legend,Challenger, Regency, morphed into Igor, Ivan, etc..
Probably even Alexandra is a morph from one of those, after all just remove the ponder from Regency, Challenge, Legend, Igor and Ivan and you end up with a similar strength to Alexandra.

All the above were highly configurable with multiple play style settings, it would not be too hard to work with these programs adding features and changing their style settings.

The Factory in China is still selling chess computers today. All you have to do is give them an order with a minimum quantity of 1000 pieces.

I tend to think that Ron Nelson's preoccupation at Excalibur was more in the area of game development ie. in the areas of design and features, testing etc In this area I am sure he and his team did a lot of development to ensure that the computers looked and SEEMED different every year when they were repackaged with the same few base highly configurable chess programs.

Saitek, through owning Mephisto owns Fidelity it would have been a law suit waiting to happen if Excalibur were to take old Fidelity products. That is very unlikely.

Best regards,

Nick
Nick
User avatar
Steve B
Site Admin
Posts: 10140
Joined: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:02 am
Location: New York City USofA
Contact:

Post by Steve B »

spacious_mind wrote:
I tend to think that Ron Nelson's preoccupation at Excalibur was more in the area of game development ie. in the areas of design and features, testing etc

Nick
Well that is not what he himself said
he said he wrote the progams for all of Excaliburs chess computers
again..not the rebadged ones you mentioned and i mentioned in my first post
its a pity i could never get him to join the CCC forum to make posts for himself but he had no interest in it

From the source Regards
Steve
User avatar
spacious_mind
Senior Member
Posts: 4000
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:20 pm
Location: Alabama
Contact:

Post by spacious_mind »

Steve B wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:
I tend to think that Ron Nelson's preoccupation at Excalibur was more in the area of game development ie. in the areas of design and features, testing etc

Nick
Well that is not what he himself said
he said he wrote the progams for all of Excaliburs chess computers
again..not the rebadged ones you mentioned and i mentioned in my first post
its a pity i could never get him to join the CCC forum to make posts for himself but he had no interest in it

From the source Regards
Steve
I know it is a pity with him and also all the other programmers. I think they wouldn't do it because they know they would set themselves up to a 1000 questions from all of us.

In my line of work I was taught many years ago the 5 WHY principle. In other words ask WHY 5 times and you will drill down to the root cause.

When I wrote about Chessmaster 2000 and Chessmaster 2100 I was in touch with Mark Manyen, he was the leader for both these projects.

So to my first question he at that time answered:

Question 1 - Were you responsible for Chessmaster 2000 and Chessmaster 2100 as the program credit seem to indicate this?

Answer - Yes I was the Lead Programming Manager on these projects. (This of course would indicate to everyone that he was the main man responsible).

Question 2 - Regarding the chess program, are you a chess programmer did you write the chess program itself?

Answer - No, as a Lead Programmer I am responsible for the functionality of the whole product but there are teams that work on graphics, teams on code etc. We used a David Kittinger program.

Question 3 - Thanks for all this information. However I am curious about Fidelity Chessmaster 2100. It seems strange to me strange that Fidelity would put their name behind a competing Novag chess programmer for this product. Fidelity's in-house chess programmer at that time was Dan & Kathe Spracklen, therefore is Kittinger correct.

Answer - Ah, now you are triggering some memory. We did actually also use Spracklen's program on 16 Bit machines as it was superior in this area. Kittinger's program was used I believe in the tape version as Kittinger's program was superior in its small size to overcome size constraints in some computers.

(He was talking about the difference between Amiga/Atari ST both 16 bit as compared to C64 or Atari 800 (8 bit). Therefore cassette versions might have differed to Floppy versions on the C64 and Atari 800.

Well I never drilled down to 5 Why's because of course you also have to be thankful that someone who knows is responding and you don't want to try their patience.

In the case of Ron Nelson, I am sure he answered you correctly but I think we are all missing the opportunity to drill down into his answers.

Best regards,
Nick
User avatar
Steve B
Site Admin
Posts: 10140
Joined: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:02 am
Location: New York City USofA
Contact:

Post by Steve B »

spacious_mind wrote:

In the case of Ron Nelson, I am sure he answered you correctly but I think we are all missing the opportunity to drill down into his answers.

Best regards,
That could be true of course
i do admit i was a bit star struck when corresponding with him so i never
pressed him on anything he told me

actually i first came in contact with him when i contacted Excalibur
after they released their LCD Chess
i noticed a bug in the program which would not accept promotions to a Knight
to my surprise Nelson himself contacted me via Email
he apologized for the bug and complained that Marketing had forced him to release the computer in time for the holidays
we began a 4-5 year e-mail correspondence which then ended after he retired
during this time we discussed many different things.. among them his part ownership of CXG(along with Shane Samole) and the personal financial loss he suffered after the Tmaster debacle(huge defect rate)
i recall asking him about the hardware specs for the Gmaster and Mirage which at the time of their release was not so well known
of all of the conversations.. i was left with the impression that he was most proud of inventing the voice chip for use with the VCC and of his implementation of the motion detectors in the Eyeball Chesster Phantom
he never seemed to take much pride in the fact that his chess program was the very first to make it to market
not sure if this was modesty on his part


Recollections Regards
Steve
User avatar
spacious_mind
Senior Member
Posts: 4000
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:20 pm
Location: Alabama
Contact:

Post by spacious_mind »

Steve B wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:

In the case of Ron Nelson, I am sure he answered you correctly but I think we are all missing the opportunity to drill down into his answers.

Best regards,
That could be true of course
i do admit i was a bit star struck when corresponding with him so i never
pressed him on anything he told me

actually i first came in contact with him when i contacted Excalibur
after they released their LCD Chess
i noticed a bug in the program which would not accept promotions to a Knight
to my surprise Nelson himself contacted me via Email
he apologized for the bug and complained that Marketing had forced him to release the computer in time for the holidays
we began a 4-5 year e-mail correspondence which then ended after he retired
during this time we discussed many different things.. among them his part ownership of CXG(along with Shane Samole) and the personal financial loss he suffered after the Tmaster debacle(huge defect rate)
i recall asking him about the hardware specs for the Gmaster and Mirage which at the time of their release was not so well known
of all of the conversations.. i was left with the impression that he was most proud of inventing the voice chip for use with the VCC and of his implementation of the motion detectors in the Eyeball Chesster Phantom
he never seemed to take much pride in the fact that his chess program was the very first to make it to market
not sure if this was modesty on his part


Recollections Regards
Steve
Yes, we are all so preoccupied with who the chess programmer was that we tend to forget that each computer has to be designed, the features developed, sound, voice, circuit board layout, chips, rom and rams, packaging, marketing etc etc. It takes a team to make a computer.

We should perhaps (probably now impossible to do) have added additional names instead of just chess programmer to our computers. That would have helped to give credit in the areas where credit is due.

For Excalibur for example Ron Nelson should rightly be mentioned on every one of their computers, but unfortunately we all only just track the chess programmer and that is where it becomes difficult sometimes.

Craig Barnes has this same difficulty with Saitek products.

Best regards,

Nick
Nick
User avatar
spacious_mind
Senior Member
Posts: 4000
Joined: Wed Aug 01, 2007 10:20 pm
Location: Alabama
Contact:

Post by spacious_mind »

In keeping with this discussion, attached is a link to an interesting chess computer which is very appropriate:

http://www.spacious-mind.com/html/advan ... chess.html

Here are some dates:

Fidelity Phantom = 1988
Fidelity Phantom Chesster = 1991
Fidelity Phantom Chesster Eyeball = 1991
Fidelity Chesster = 1990
Fidelity Little Chesster V1 = 1991
Fidelity Little Chesster V2 = 1992
Saitek Advanced Talking Chess = 1996
Mephisto bought Fidelity in 1988
Morsch later uses Chesster as a name for PC chess software (why? he could have used a billion other names instead? Why Chesster?)
Steve mentions Nelson is proud of Voice and Motion Development.
Barnes mentioned he worked on Saitek Advanced Talking Chess.
Morsch worked for Mephisto around 1998 and Saitek?
Barnes is Morsch's in-house sidekick at Saitek?
Since 1988 Morsch & Nelson and Barnes must have worked for the owner?

So questions.......

1) Did Morsch assist Nelson on Chesster?
2) Did Barnes assist Nelson on Chesster?
3) Did Nelson develop the motion detector for Eyeball Phantom while Morsch or Morsch/Barnes work on the Voice (afterall someone had to, the program also came out as Kishon Chesster in German and that would not be Nelson (not aware of him speaking German)).
4) Were all the Chesster's still Spracklen?
5) Who gets credit for Saitek Advanced Talking Chess? Maybe all of them? However, if the chess program was a Spracklen then it would remain even under Saitek Brand a Spracklen?
6) Strange that no one had heard of this computer until the last 3 or 4 years. It seems as if it was never officially released. Maybe it was a royalty problem that kept if from being sold?

Wow this makes your mind hurt, regards!
Nick
Mike Watters
Member
Posts: 429
Joined: Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:31 pm
Location: Milton Keynes
Contact:

Post by Mike Watters »

Steve

I can only back up what Nick says on doubts over who did what. Like your goodself and others here I have tried to pin down the facts from chess computer programmers and others, when the opportunity has arisen. Unfortunately the trail is often cold 25-35 years on. In connection with the UK-The Story article I managed to get some reliable information from David Levy, and a little from Richard Lang and Ken Cohen's son Chad (CXG). I also followed up Craig Barnes comments on this forum to see how much accurate detail I could get about Saitek. A Saitek software engineer who liaised with and visited Hong Kong as part of the team working on the Galileo, Renaissance etc was also of help in describing the industry at that time. Mostly though you have to put two and two together.

When Excalibur started the industry was contracting, there was not much money for R&D and manufacturers were already rehashing programs rather than commissioning new programs and programmers. The chess engine programmers mostly worked on their own, didn't necessarily know what models they were programming and were not involved in all the adaptions, features and I/O programming carried out by corporate teams or contract programmers in Hong Kong, the UK, Israel and Singapore. Excalibur were closely associated with CXG and David Levy and the chess computers were manufactured in China, so they were all very much part of the same commercial environment. It would be surprising then if Excalibur took a entirely separate path to developing and programming their chess computers.

When I wrote 'without having the slightest evidence' I was forgetting something. At the end of 'Chess Computers - The UK Story' there are a couple of paragraphs about CXG. Where it says "Chess computers were also manufactured for Excalibur and Millennium" the words "Levy was the source of programs for all these cheaper models......" were suggested by David Levy himself.

Chess Computer Archaeology regards
Mike
User avatar
Fernando
Admiral of the Fleet
Posts: 3059
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:35 pm
Location: Santiago de Chile

Post by Fernando »

what an incredible development my simple question at the beginning of the thread produced!
An enormously interesting.
As you said, this is archaeology.
Probably even it has no sense my question.
So many successive layers of programming from so many different programmers. probably even "programming" something, anything, has these days an entirely distinct meaning as it had 30 years ago.
No anymore one guy writing everything, but a line of production, as in anything else.
If the Spacklen are embedded in Excalibur and who knows how many others comps, probably they are as artifacts of different origin and times are embedded in the ruins of an old city.
Maybe all that rest from that couple is that movement of the king to h1 or h8....

Fern
Festina Lente
User avatar
Steve B
Site Admin
Posts: 10140
Joined: Sun Jul 29, 2007 10:02 am
Location: New York City USofA
Contact:

Post by Steve B »

I went back and reviewed some of the emails I still kept of my conversations with Nelson
sadly.. I didn't keep everything so I have no further "evidence" to offer to convince the folks here that he indeed was the programmer(lets say....lead programmer) for Excalibur

I did send him off an email using the last known address I had for him and asked him to join the discussion
I mentioned that speculation has now reached a point where David Levy (of all people) are being discussed as the Excalibur programmer
hopefully that will alarm him enough to rush to the surface
:P

anyway....
I did come across an interesting series of conversations in which he asked my advice about putting up for sale on Ebay several items he
owned:
1)Original CC3 in box never used..still in shrink wrap
2)ACR-Advanced Checker Challenger
3)Fidelity POP-A Point of Purchase marketing display for Fidelity Products

to my knowledge he put up the CC3 and ACR

so...someone...somewhere ..out there ..owns a CC3 bought directly from the hands of the Father of all dedicated chess computer programmers

Ron Nelson Regards
Steve
User avatar
Fernando
Admiral of the Fleet
Posts: 3059
Joined: Tue Jul 31, 2007 4:35 pm
Location: Santiago de Chile

Post by Fernando »

Steve B wrote:I went back and reviewed some of the emails I still kept of my conversations with Nelson
sadly.. I didn't keep everything so I have no further "evidence" to offer to convince the folks here that he indeed was the programmer(lets say....lead programmer) for Excalibur

I did send him off an email using the last known address I had for him and asked him to join the discussion
I mentioned that speculation has now reached a point where David Levy (of all people) are being discussed as the Excalibur programmer
hopefully that will alarm him enough to rush to the surface
:P

anyway....
I did come across an interesting series of conversations in which he asked my advice about putting up for sale on Ebay several items he
owned:
1)Original CC3 in box never used..still in shrink wrap
2)ACR-Advanced Checker Challenger
3)Fidelity POP-A Point of Purchase marketing display for Fidelity Products

to my knowledge he put up the CC3 and ACR

so...someone...somewhere ..out there ..owns a CC3 bought directly from the hands of the Father of all dedicated chess computer programmers

Ron Nelson Regards
Steve

A CC3 coming from those hands should be priced as gold. I imagine you easily expending the full legacy you previously has for your wife, if she still is currently your wife.
I would be prepared to expend all, too.

15 bucks regards
Fern
Festina Lente
Post Reply