Ron Nelson Ever Copied, Used , Cloned the Spracklen?

[Bryan Whitby]

And as they say, RON HAS NOW LEFT THE BUILDING and has given me permission to post a recent Facebook photo of himself and the CC1 drawing he mentioned in one of his posts.
Thanks
Ron

[Reinfeld]

I just want to thank Ron for a lifetime of wonderful work and the willingness to jump into this forum and grace us with recollections and history. Kudos and again, thank you so much. Your efforts have brought me many hours of enjoyment.

- R.

[bataais]

Dear Ron Nelson,
thank you so much for all your amazing posts you share with us electronic chess addicts. You offer us so much insight into the history.
Instead of talking about GM/Mirage/Igor/Ivan/Alexandra I want to put your 2K 8049 program into focus, of which you are justly proud. If I'm correct, it was inside the Fidelity Micro Chess Challenger, then revised in Fidelity Eldorado and was then ported to 6805 (2K version, faster clock), for Fidelity Chess Mate. This is still the strongest 2K chesscomputer in the world, and the only one that can solve mate-in-3. Quite an achievement.

[ChessChallenger]

Dear Ron Nelson,
thank you so much for all your amazing posts you share with us electronic chess addicts. You offer us so much insight into the history.
Instead of talking about GM/Mirage/Igor/Ivan/Alexandra I want to put your 2K 8049 program into focus, of which you are justly proud. If I'm correct, it was inside the Fidelity Micro Chess Challenger, then revised in Fidelity Eldorado and was then ported to 6805 (2K version, faster clock), for Fidelity Chess Mate. This is still the strongest 2K chesscomputer in the world, and the only one that can solve mate-in-3. Quite an achievement.

Thank you for your comments.

The Eldorado was interesting because it was produced for me (Fidelity) with my 8049 chip by CXG, Eric White's company in Hong Kong.

I have put the Fidelity Chess Mate and Avanti on my updated product development timeline, since it seems they say programmer UNKNOWN on these computer chess history online databases.

The 2Kbyte 6805 program in the Chess Mate, with only a 2 digit display, was upgraded by me to a 4K version that was used in my early Excalibur Electronics chess products.

I was thinking of publishing the 2K 6805 program source code and make a Windows simulator to run it. I tested all my software with simulators, including Fidelity Spracklen 6502 and 68000 programs.

[Mike Watters]

Dear Ron Nelson,
thank you so much for all your amazing posts you share with us electronic chess addicts. You offer us so much insight into the history.
Instead of talking about GM/Mirage/Igor/Ivan/Alexandra I want to put your 2K 8049 program into focus, of which you are justly proud. If I'm correct, it was inside the Fidelity Micro Chess Challenger, then revised in Fidelity Eldorado and was then ported to 6805 (2K version, faster clock), for Fidelity Chess Mate. This is still the strongest 2K chesscomputer in the world, and the only one that can solve mate-in-3. Quite an achievement.

Hi bataais

In fact the Fidelity Micro Chess Challenger 12-key (1987) seems to have been an exact clone of the CXG Pocket Chess (1986). See Hein Veldhuis's database. The 2K program in that machine is, on good evidence, attributed to Mark Taylor and David Levy.

All the best
Mike

[bataais]

Hi Mike,
you're right, I meant Fidelity Chess Challenger Mini Sensory.
And Ron, publishing the 2K 6805 source would be great, it's a piece of art. I certainly would try to grasp it.

[ChessChallenger]

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:

Best regards

Hi Nick,

I found a reference to the Chess Challenger 10 that was duplicated (the ROM I mentioned).
It was The CXG Computachess I. I stopped it from shipping into the US but it seems Eric sold it as Chess Mate in Europe.
Here is info from the website I found.

CHESS MATE

This Chess Mate was in a box in English and French, without trademark, year or country origin. it was bought in 1981. However, the operating manual logo looks like the CXG Computachess one.

A simple comparison of the playing levels and the keyboard, shows that it's a Chess Challenger 10 clone, with a lower speed. In fact, the user manual is optimistic: the Chess Mate is two time slower than a Chess Challenger 10; the processor is a Z80 / 2MHz instead of 4.


Level comparison


Keyboard comparison.


The unit

Regards,
Ron

[spacious_mind]

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:

Best regards

Hi Nick,

I found a reference to the Chess Challenger 10 that was duplicated (the ROM I mentioned).
It was The CXG Computachess I. I stopped it from shipping into the US but it seems Eric sold it as Chess Mate in Europe.
Here is info from the website I found.

CHESS MATE

This Chess Mate was in a box in English and French, without trademark, year or country origin. it was bought in 1981. However, the operating manual logo looks like the CXG Computachess one.

A simple comparison of the playing levels and the keyboard, shows that it's a Chess Challenger 10 clone, with a lower speed. In fact, the user manual is optimistic: the Chess Mate is two time slower than a Chess Challenger 10; the processor is a Z80 / 2MHz instead of 4.


Level comparison


Keyboard comparison.


The unit

Regards,
Ron

Hi Ron,

Thanks for the clarification. I had forgotten about the Chess Mate. I have not gotten around to doing a webpage for my Toytronic.

It is correctly listed in the link below. It looks like there is a typo on that page though as the quartz shows 2.0 MHz but it is specified as 2.5 MHz. There is a picture of it opened as well.

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

Best regards

[Steve B]

I found a reference to the Chess Challenger 10 that was duplicated (the ROM I mentioned).
It was The CXG Computachess I. I stopped it from shipping into the US but it seems Eric sold it as Chess Mate in Europe.

Well we shall now consider the ChessMate /ComputaChess I as Illegal Clones
let all web sites across the land record this

another well know illegal clone of one of your programs is the Brazilian made Splice Byte XD300
it is a clone of your CC7 Program



Actually the computer is a highly sort after collectors item
showing that sometimes collector's can be ...

Ruthless Regards
Steve

[12voltios]

I am the one whose name is on US Patent 4,235,442.
I am the one who programmed every line of code for every chess game produced by Excalibur Electronics. There was no team. Just me.
I designed every schematic, every circuit board, every housing.
I wrote and desktop published every Instruction Manual.
I designed everything about the Excalibur LCD Chess. It's new housing design was later copied by Sony in their Walkman Bean.
I designed and programmed the Excalibur Gametime Chess Clock.

The Excalibur Grandmaster design is totally my work. I wrote the H8 code.
The book openings for all the Excalibur Chess Games was designed by Larry Kaufman. Larry Kaufman is a most brilliant Chess Master that understood computer chess search. He would explain to me how Franz Moerch evaluated positions, just by playing his program. He was incredible. He wrote a list of things for an evaluation function and how to balance it. His piece weightings were different than the Spracklens.

mmm Chess Engines...Look at the published Z80 Sargon code, When the 6502 code was demoed at Fidelity, Dan couldn't stop saying how fast it was.
There was a dramatic software design change. All static eval and fast search,
When I finally saw the source code I cried. It was the most unprofessional program I had ever seen, Because of the Apple II development limitation all comments were skipped. All labels brief. Only Dan could maintain and add code. But Dan explained it was the Attack Bitmaps that was the major improvement. In 1981 at the California ACM Computer Chess Tournament, Kathy introduced me to their friend Ken Thompson. I asked him about his Belle hardware chess machine, and he was quick to explain how the Hardware Attack Bitmaps worked. I realized that attack bitmap approach was now in a Chess Challenger, but in software. I used the Belle Attack Map generation on my H8 program.

I have a Grandmaster Excalibur 747K that was working fine. I pressed the off button to pause a game and the game will not start any more. I have reviewed many of the available sources and cannot find schematics to help me troubleshoot. Would welcome any help from the audience in guiding me on how to perform this repair. All squares were functioning fine with the magnetic pieces and the board has not sustained any hard hits. I think that me leaving some batteries for a long time may have caused some corrosion but I cleaned the contest and this appeared to not cause any damage. I opened the board and find that the on button is receiving 2.0 volts when I press it. Not sure what happens next or were the signal goes to but I want to bring it back to life. The reset button is not doing anything either. Any help or comments welcomed and I can be reached at dannyt1 at hotmail dot com for any suggestion. I can also be reached by phone at 407 802 8875. my name is Daniel.

Thank you!

[Graham Banks]

Regards,
Ron

The first chess computer I owned.
Lovely looking unit with nice wooden pieces, but t wouldn't castle though.

[spacious_mind]

The first chess computer I owned.
Lovely looking unit with nice wooden pieces, but t wouldn't castle though.

Hi Graham,

Yes that is a nice looking one.

Regards

[paulwise3]

Hi all,

There is a document summarizing a lot of Ron Nelson's postings here, see
http://www.schaakcomputers.nl/hein_veld ... isited.pdf
(I am afraid you have to copy and paste the full url...)
A second part may appear within a few months.

Chess computer pioneer fan regards,
Paul

[ricard60]

Great summary!!.

Thanks Paul.

Part of the history of dedicated chess machines regards
Ricardo