World Championship Winning Computer Chess Software Program & Downloads for Chess Databases, Analysis and Play on PC, Mac, iPad and iPhone — Visit: Hiarcs.com
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 ...
ChessChallenger wrote: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.
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.
