ChessChallenger wrote:
Yes, a very fair assessment.
If it plays a good move it is because of Larry.
If it plays a bad move it is because of my programming.
You are being unfair to yourself
The program plays very competitive and it's strength range is as good as any of the other programs in its category from other manufacturers. Some people have increased it's performance by doubling it's Quartz and thereby squeezing an extra 70 or so ELO out of it
But it gets frowned upon for tampering with the insides
ChessChallenger wrote:
But the Pop-Up Tent, Inc mechanical “engineer”, screwed up on the Mirage housing design and the main motor mounting was off axis and caused high failure rates.
At this same time, I also designed the Ivan with the H8 engine and Eric White’s HK company produced it for us.
But I was also completing my low end chess line at about that time, and we received a fantastic bid for producing them
from another HK manufacture, Sametime, Ltd, and started the production of my 6805 games there.
This worked well, so we asked our Mirage & Grand Master Hong Kong manufacturer, EWIG, Ltd to quote on the Ivan.
They were much lower than Eric White’s manufacturing company so we switched.
That is when Excalibur severed close relations with Eric’s company and Excalibur started its own Hong Kong presence.
Sid Samole’s Pop Tent, Inc had folded (the inventor told Sid he applied for a patent, but a distributor the inventor had contacted
before he talked to Sid, filed their own patent on the inventor’s design. The inventors patent claimes was rejected, and that was the end of Pop Tent).
So Sid was now full time at Excalibur and assumed control, and they moved to a smaller building.
This was in 1999, I took a 9 month sabbatical to work full time on a new 4-bit chess engine,
a new LCD segmented chess display and an innovative new housing design,
that years later, Sony would copy and call the Walkman Bean.
I returned to Excalibur and with the LCD Chess design in hand, and negotiated a more lucrative contract for myself.
Because of the mechanical design problems and lack of knowledge and experience by EWIG in Hong Kong to produce a sophisticated moving chess piece product,
there were many returns of the Mirage, which was bad for Excalibur’s financials.
So Excalibur was not doing well when I returned.
But that Christmas, LCD Chess was a huge success, and I was told by people in the know that I had rescued Excalibur to fight another day (year).
First the Par Excellence, now again a successful low cost, high profit margin, quality product breathes fresh air into a company when it is needed.
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
No-one knows whether Sid would have found a programmer etc.
