when did you start?

[flok]

I'm curious: when did others here start with computer chess developments?
I've got the feeling that we had a semi-large influx around the 80s/90s and recently again with that nnue stuff. Is that information available in a database? e.g. by Frank or the people from CCRL?

I looked it up in an old backup and it looks like I started my first program around 1995-03-12 18:28:14 CET (around: because this is the file-save time, not the time I started typing).

[smatovic]

I started 2010 with age 32. During my computer science studies (which I started after CS vocational training++) I wanted to tinker with GPGPU, so computer chess it was.

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Srdja

[smatovic]

I know that we have some oldies in here, Ed and Chris started business in the 80s, HGM and Joost programmed already in the 70s, and Larry Kaufman probably tops us all, active in CC since the 60s.

You can look up some dates on the CPW.

--
Srdja

[chrisw]

I know that we have some oldies in here, Ed and Chris started business in the 80s, HGM and Joost programmed already in the 70s, and Larry Kaufman probably tops us all, active in CC since the 60s.

You can look up some dates on the CPW.

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Srdja

I built a Tuscan (8080) and then a Triton computer in about 1980, same time as Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, so I basically had a primitive dev environment to write programs and port them to home computers. Then Sinclair Spectrum etc etc. Americans were with TRS80 (I think) and Apple around that time. Also there was a PET. But building your own got in faster which was the name of the game in those days. Within a year or so I (we) were being given more powerful dev kits by the growing mass of computer hardware people who needed games software to give away with their computers.

[mclane]

I know that we have some oldies in here, Ed and Chris started business in the 80s, HGM and Joost programmed already in the 70s, and Larry Kaufman probably tops us all, active in CC since the 60s.

You can look up some dates on the CPW.

--
Srdja

I built a Tuscan (8080) and then a Triton computer in about 1980, same time as Sinclair ZX80 and ZX81, so I basically had a primitive dev environment to write programs and port them to home computers. Then Sinclair Spectrum etc etc. Americans were with TRS80 (I think) and Apple around that time. Also there was a PET. But building your own got in faster which was the name of the game in those days. Within a year or so I (we) were being given more powerful dev kits by the growing mass of computer hardware people who needed games software to give away with their computers.

Is it (Triton) this machine ?

[mclane]

Did you had a chess engine first for spectrum 16K/48K or did you before even had one for Sinclair zx80 / zx81 ?!

Ah - i found the answer myself: amazing.



This looks like a serious engine considering the RAM / CPU restrictions on the zx81.

Zx81 had Zilog Z80 @ 3,25 MHz and only 1024 Bytes RAM.
But there were memory expansions available later.

The game needed a 16K RAM Expansion and had 9 levels of play.

One can play against it online here:
https://www.zx81stuff.org.uk/zx81/emula ... er%20Chess

In 1982 it was possible to choose between tactical and positional evaluation.

[Frank Quisinsky]

Hi there,

I started with 11 years, with 12 years my first own chess computer was a ChessChallenger 7 around the year 1979. Later I had a Mephisto I, II, III. On xMas, my parents would give me the latest modules as gifts.

One of my soccer friends had a ChessChallenger 10 and taught me how to play chess. We often played together against the ChessChallenger 10. He also played in a chess club. I helped Ernst Musch a little with test results. He sold chess computers, he was a dealer. Around 1991 I had many contacts to Jan Louwman, we switched often results and we often talked on the phone. In that time I produced a chess newspaper for our chess-club or organiced tounreys with chess computer in our chess-club often with the partner club in St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg is the "sister" city from Neuss (my place of birth). Later I helped Gambit-Soft in secret mission a bit with news to PD / free chess programs. Here I started around the year 1995 / 1996. Chess computers are expensive and I was young. Later I had often 4 or 5 at home, often I buy to resell, often Ernst Musch sent new things to me and I am testing a bit. He need test-results for his own customers. I think all strong chess computers I had, often more times in my life.

I collected the games all the years. Each of my games vs. Chess-Computer for an example or each games I can found from others vs. chess-computers. Never I public the database. Later I public a database to official computer chess events on my own Winboard site, later working Franz Huber on the database. That was horrible work I do often with Roland Pfister (programmer of Patzer).

With other chess friends I organiced later tounreys with Winboard engines, we started a rating list about it and I started a website to the topic "Winboard". The site I started with Volker Pittlik in times I helped Gambit-Soft a lot.

Programmings: I learn Cobol and TurboPascal in younger years, I think I was 20 year old. I studied business administration in the evenings while working (a part of the training involved programming). But I wasn't very good at it, programming never really interested me that much. Often chess was in the foreground, but my main interest are commercial aviation and soccer. I play for soccer clubs, and in my free time I spend more time at airports than at the chessboard. But most of "Spotter" on the airport have a the Novag VIP, Novag Super VIP in the camera case, later. Among the spotter community, I was always the crazy guy who was into chess computers. At the Düsseldorf airport, I met a lot of interesting people, such as an Air Canada captain. I corresponded with his flight attendant for quite some time. With the captain I played often with chess computer, in times he was in DUS.



Best
Frank

Funny:
My first very expensive chess-computer was a Fidelity Excel Mach III. Later I found a person, tuned this computer to 20Mhz. I am selling this computer in the year 1991. Today, exact this chess computer (same serial number), is at home again ... since around 3 months with very, very bizarre circumstances, 35 years later with the coin I once stuck on the side of the figure compartment as a good-luck charm. When I saw that, I almost had tears in my eyes. It was my own coin.

[Frank Quisinsky]

The Excel Mach III, 20Mhz had a nice life. He was in Austria at first, than in Cuba and then back in Austria, today in my hand again and is in absolutly great / perfect conditions ... looks new!! Only the handbook is lost. Chess computers will outlive us all.

[JVMerlino]

I started developing Myrddin in December of 2008. But I was part of the Chessmaster development team starting in 1996 with CM5500.

[Steve Maughan]

I first got into computer chess at fourteen, when my granddad bought me a Morphy Encore chess computer. That little machine turned out to be the start of a lifelong passion.

There have been plenty of highlights along the way. In the early '90s I used to make the trip up to Burford in Oxfordshire from Reading, where I was living at the time, and spend many an hour with Chris Whittington trying to figure out how such things as the null move heuristic actually worked, playing the various engines against each other to try to make them stronger. I also got involved with Eric Hallsworth's "Selective Search" newsletter, which was great fun.

I didn't start developing my own engine until around 2000, but I've been hooked ever since. One real highlight was competing in the World Computer Chess Championship in 2015. I had absolutely no chance of winning, but just being part of the event, talking to the other programmers and geeking out for a week, was so much fun.

It really is a fun and addictive hobby.