There has been very little progress in the past year.
Some of that is due to my own laziness, some due to family health issues, and some of it is due to my waiting patiently for the authors to send me the stuff they offered.
Well, today I have a few minor updates to announce.
1) Jim ABlett has made a Winboard version of John Stanback's 1987 public domain program.
2) A slightly newer (and hopefully better) version of John Stanback's program was posted. It's not winboard, but maybe somebody can take Jim's changes and make one that is.
(I have to admit, I am really curious as to how well those two programs actually play!)
3) A copy of the CACM paper on CoKo III was posted. This is copyright, but distributable for non-profit reasons. I had a 20 year old photocopy of this and wanted to post it, but it wasn't good enough. I recently realized I could get one from them and post that.
4) A bug in Chess 0.5 was found. Typo. It effects the castling.
5) A link to Mr. Donskoy's blog entry on Kaissa. If anybody is good at translating Russian to English, let me know.
And the jewel of this update....
6) I was given some scans of the hand written autocode cards for Kaissa. So cool. There are only 120 of them, but that's still cool. They were actually hand written. Not some boring, inpersonal print out. But hand written.
I have gotten in touch with the author of l'Excentrique. When he gets time, he's going to write an article about it.
I have also gotten an email from an author of one of the major mainframe programs and he said he has finally gotten the mainframe emulator and OS up and running and he's starting to take a look at getting his old program actually working and ready to distribute. (Hopefully I'll get something by the end of the year....!)
And, as always, if you know any of the authors from back then, please get in touch with them and let them know about my collection.
There are still a lot of programs sitting in somebody's basement or attic that need to be found. Unfortunately, I am terrible at actually finding people.
If you have any programs (with permissions from the author!), please let me know so I can add them to the public collection.
http://classicchess.googlepages.com/Chess.htm
Update on my Classic Computer Chess programs collection.
Moderators: hgm, Rebel, chrisw
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Carey
- Posts: 313
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:18 pm
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Bill Rogers
- Posts: 3562
- Joined: Thu Mar 09, 2006 3:54 am
- Location: San Jose, California
Re: Update on my Classic Computer Chess programs collection.
Hello once again.
I have according to my latest count ovr 26 chess program written in Basic.
I also discovered last night while looking for more chess programs that were written in basic an original copy of MyChess by David K.
Let me know and I will send you a copy of it and another one that must have come out just a little later. I have two copies.
Also found the original copy of Pison
Bill
I have according to my latest count ovr 26 chess program written in Basic.
I also discovered last night while looking for more chess programs that were written in basic an original copy of MyChess by David K.
Let me know and I will send you a copy of it and another one that must have come out just a little later. I have two copies.
Also found the original copy of Pison
Bill
-
Carey
- Posts: 313
- Joined: Wed Mar 08, 2006 8:18 pm
Re: Update on my Classic Computer Chess programs collection.
I would need some indication that I can legally post those on the web.
The author gives me explicit permission, or the author / publisher has been freely distributing it for many years etc.
Being printed in a magazine or it being a commercial program considered 'abandonware' isn't suitable.
I need some reason to believe I can legally distribute them.
I realize that many people on the web distribute abandoned programs. Early versions of Chessmaster, Sargon-1, Sargon 2, MyChess, and so on.
I've even commented to a few of them but they usually dismiss it and say something like "nobody really cares" or "I have connections" (without actually saying they have the permission), and so on.
But it's not actually legal.
For my collection, I'm trying hard to actually have the proper permissions.
I'm tempted to just put stuff on the site. But I am trying hard to keep everything legit. (Having said that, I do wish somebody else would create a site with the programs that are abandoned, uncertain orgin, etc. They still deserve to be saved.)
For the BASIC programs, if there is no author and no indication of where it came from, it might be okay.
If it had been printed in a magazine, then the publisher likely still owns the copyright to it. From what I've heard of other projects, many publishers don't actually care about the old magazines or the programs, and they aren't likely to chase you down and sue you. But if you ask them, then they will usually say "No."
Tracking them down and finding the right person to ask can be quite a challenge. If you ask anybody in the legal dept., then they'll give an automatic no. So you also have to find the right person in the company to ask.
Sometimes it's an effort to even find who owns the rights. Some company bought some company that bought the magazine, and now the current owner doesn't even know they own it. In that case, it's not going to be worth their effort to give you permission. It's easier and safer to say "No."
So I'm willing to post stuff of value, but I need to know I can legally do it.
Carey
The author gives me explicit permission, or the author / publisher has been freely distributing it for many years etc.
Being printed in a magazine or it being a commercial program considered 'abandonware' isn't suitable.
I need some reason to believe I can legally distribute them.
I realize that many people on the web distribute abandoned programs. Early versions of Chessmaster, Sargon-1, Sargon 2, MyChess, and so on.
I've even commented to a few of them but they usually dismiss it and say something like "nobody really cares" or "I have connections" (without actually saying they have the permission), and so on.
But it's not actually legal.
For my collection, I'm trying hard to actually have the proper permissions.
I'm tempted to just put stuff on the site. But I am trying hard to keep everything legit. (Having said that, I do wish somebody else would create a site with the programs that are abandoned, uncertain orgin, etc. They still deserve to be saved.)
For the BASIC programs, if there is no author and no indication of where it came from, it might be okay.
If it had been printed in a magazine, then the publisher likely still owns the copyright to it. From what I've heard of other projects, many publishers don't actually care about the old magazines or the programs, and they aren't likely to chase you down and sue you. But if you ask them, then they will usually say "No."
Tracking them down and finding the right person to ask can be quite a challenge. If you ask anybody in the legal dept., then they'll give an automatic no. So you also have to find the right person in the company to ask.
Sometimes it's an effort to even find who owns the rights. Some company bought some company that bought the magazine, and now the current owner doesn't even know they own it. In that case, it's not going to be worth their effort to give you permission. It's easier and safer to say "No."
So I'm willing to post stuff of value, but I need to know I can legally do it.
Carey
Bill Rogers wrote:Hello once again.
I have according to my latest count ovr 26 chess program written in Basic.
I also discovered last night while looking for more chess programs that were written in basic an original copy of MyChess by David K.
Let me know and I will send you a copy of it and another one that must have come out just a little later. I have two copies.
Also found the original copy of Pison
Bill