The tragedy of Xmas for dedicated chess machines fans

[mclane]

The H8, like other microcontroller chips and unlike high-end CPUs, has lots of nonlinear components onboard to handle I/O, A/D-D/A conversion, serial line conditioning, et cetera. These components are more likely to fail due to overclocking.

I'm not pessimistic, I'm realistic.

i did not have any H8 machine that was not running with 24 mhz.
and most of them were using 10-12 mhz and run without problem
with 24 mhz.

most computerchess companies, beside NOVAG, used only 10-12 mhz.
instead of maximum speed (talking about saitek and excalibur or CXG and all other small ones).

Novag mainly clocks the cpus at maximum speed.

[mhull]

actually i am a happy puppy for now
the New 2Robot is amazing to watch and seems to play with no glitches
true..the strength is low but at the end of a long tiring day at the office its nice to turn on the computer..set it to its "equal response time" level and then i can kick butt all over the board
so sue me if i end the day wondering if perhaps i am the next Tal when i win after a brilliant sacrificial attack
i know the thrill of victory (and big smile on my face )is not lessened one iota by its low playing strength

Delusion makes for a great nights sleep regards
Steve

Hi Steve,

The Excalibur picture posted by Thorsten shows the white pieces a different color than the picture provided at ChessUSA.com. I like the whiter color of the former much better than the more yellow color on ChessUSA. Is there so much variation in color or is it an option when you buy?

[Steve B]

actually i am a happy puppy for now
the New 2Robot is amazing to watch and seems to play with no glitches
true..the strength is low but at the end of a long tiring day at the office its nice to turn on the computer..set it to its "equal response time" level and then i can kick butt all over the board
so sue me if i end the day wondering if perhaps i am the next Tal when i win after a brilliant sacrificial attack
i know the thrill of victory (and big smile on my face )is not lessened one iota by its low playing strength

Delusion makes for a great nights sleep regards
Steve

Hi Steve,

The Excalibur picture posted by Thorsten shows the white pieces a different color than the picture provided at ChessUSA.com. I like the whiter color of the former much better than the more yellow color on ChessUSA. Is there so much variation in color or is it an option when you buy?

Hi Matt
well i cant say about the yellow colors but i have two Gm's (the normal 747k and the Platinum 747P) both piece sets have normal white colors like the photo Thor Posted
as far as i know there is no option on the colors of the pieces

Color Blind Regards
Steve

[Bill Rogers]

To Steve B & Thorsten
Between the two of you, you guys seem to know more about dedicated chess machines than anyone else here. I just bought 10 more machines and discovered that two of them are actually duplicates. I logged onto Wikipedia and tried to look up a few manufactures with no luck. I have a suggestion which I know would involve a lot of work but I would love to see a page dedicated to each manufacture of chess machines with a list of the models made and which ones held the same programs, just in different cases.
Upon searching Wikipedia I discovered that Peter Jennings "Micro Chess" was actually put into a chess machine and sold world wide.
If either of you, or both of you decide to take up the task, I would be happy to be a holder of such data with pictures of each machine until there was enough to start a web page on Wikipedia.
Just an idea and of course I understand it is a demanding request so if wither of you pass on this idea I would understand.
Bill

[Bill Rogers]

To Steve B & Thorsten
Between the two of you, you guys seem to know more about dedicated chess machines than anyone else here. I just bought 10 more machines and discovered that two of them are actually duplicates. I logged onto Wikipedia and tried to look up a few manufactures with no luck. I have a suggestion which I know would involve a lot of work but I would love to see a page dedicated to each manufacture of chess machines with a list of the models made and which ones held the same programs, just in different cases.
Upon searching Wikipedia I discovered that Peter Jennings "Micro Chess" was actually put into a chess machine and sold world wide.
If either of you, or both of you decide to take up the task, I would be happy to be a holder of such data with pictures of each machine until there was enough to start a web page on Wikipedia.
Just an idea and of course I understand it is a demanding request so if wither of you pass on this idea I would understand.
Bill

[mclane]

hi bill, there IS such a website. only it is in german in the moment.

http://www.schachcomputer.info

there you can look up almost all dedicated chess computers. some with
picture and hardware and programmer info, etc.


on the left side you will see a category: "GERÄTE:"

this means "machines:"

beneath you will find links to the machines of the following producers/companies:

» Mephisto
» Saitek (Kasparov)
» SciSys
» Novag
» Fidelity
» TASC
» RadioShack
» Phoenix Chess
» Excalibur
» RFT Erfurt
» Chafitz / Sandy
» Conchess
» Peri
» CXG
» Millennium
» Lang / Langjun electronic


also you can look up names of dedicated chess computers,
or names of programmers or any other search tag.


micro chess was e.g. in MK2. this machine was in 2 different versions (a and b). it gives funny sound signals.

with Peter Jennings as searched word you get the following entry:
http://www.schach-computer.info/wiki/in ... s%2C_Peter

which shows an interview with the programmer and also 2 dedicated machines with his program into.

IMO we link everything together. the computerchess world, the computerchess museum, the software and the hardware area.

step by step.

because we are a big community. and we all love computerchess.

[Bill Rogers]

Wow and thank you Thor. I will take a long look at the German page and try to get it translated. If I am successful then I will see if they would allow me to post the thing in Wikipedia or maybe they would do it for us.
Bill

[mclane]

if you don't understand anything that is german, feel free to ask me, i will translate it for you.

[sje]

For more details on the H8 architecture, see:

http://america.renesas.com/homepage.jsp

Note that there's a map from H8 to H8S to H8SX with the last one running at up to 50 MHz (also, 50 MIPS).

With one of the high end chips that has better speed and much more RAM than the measly 3 KB seen in the Citrine CPU, there's a lot of strength gain to be had with a transplant.

Of course, the manufacturers of dedicated units need to be convinced to make the upgraded CPU technology available.

----

Now if I were designing a dedicated unit using an H8, I'd spend the extra five or ten dollars and have two CPUs. One would do move selection while the other would handle the board input sensing, the board output LED display, the serial I/O, the PC data exchange, the clocks, and maybe a voice output.

[kaissa]

[quote="fern"]
The crippled or friendly levels of every engine are a sham. They play absolutely absurd moves such as giving a piece and then they plays as a GM for 5 moves in a row.
That is NOT a 2000 or 1900 player. You never feel you are playing just an expert level player, but twoplayers, the moron and the genius, side by side. [/quote]

I totally agree with you. I therefore decided to update :) my computer to an old Palm.