Despite the horrible hardware limitations, the programmers of that time were able to write many chess engines that were playing pretty well. According to the critics of the time, the best engines were as follows:
- Sargon-III
- Colossus Chess 4
- ChessMaster 2100
- MyChess 2.0
With great difficulty, I'm doing play to these engines a mini tournament.
No standard (UCI or WinBoard), no possibility to perform automatic matches, but all the moves must be entered manually, first in an engine, then in the other. Nothing PGN. I have to manually enter the moves in a GUI!

it was fun to see how much these engines were playing innocently!
Here is the result of the first challenge, where MyChess has crushed Colossus. Next challange: Sargon-III Vs. ChessMaster-2100...

Time control: 2 minutes per move.
Emulator: Vice (for Commodore-64)
CPU: AMD 8350-FX (overclocked to 5 GHz)
RAM: 16 GBytes
O.S. Fedora Core ver. 18
[Event "Grande Sfida 8 bit"]
[Site "Attila Computer"]
[Date "2013.04.22"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Colossus Chess 4"]
[Black "MyChess 2.0"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "A28"]
[EventDate "2013.04.22"]
1.c4 e5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Nf3 Nc6 4.d4 e4 5.Ng5 Bb4 6.d5 Bxc3+ 7.bxc3 Nb8 8.Qd4
Qe7 9.e3 O-O 10.c5 h6 11.d6 Qe8 12.Nh3 Nc6 13.Qd2 Qe5 14.Ba3 b6 15.dxc7
bxc5 16.Rb1 Ne8 17.Bb5 Nxc7 18.O-O Bb7 19.Qxd7 Rad8 20.Qg4 Rd2 21.Qf4 Nxb5
22.Rxb5 Qxf4 23.Nxf4 Ba6 24.Rxc5 Bxf1 25.Rxc6 Rd1 26.f3 Bb5+ 27.Kf2 Bxc6
28.Bxf8 Kxf8 29.Kg3 exf3 0-1
[Event "Grande Sfida 8bit"]
[Site "Computer Attila"]
[Date "2013.04.22"]
[Round "2"]
[White "MyChess 2.0"]
[Black "Colossus Chess 4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "C42p"]
[EventDate "2013.04.22"]
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nf3 Nxe4 5.d4 Be7 6.Bd3 Bf5 7.O-O Nc6 8.c4
d5 9.cxd5 Qxd5 10.Bf4 O-O-O 11.Qc2 Nd6 12.Nc3 Bxd3 13.Qxd3 Qf5 14.Qxf5+
Nxf5 15.d5 Nb4 16.Rad1 Bd6 17.Bd2 Nd3 18.Bc1 Nxc1 19.Rxc1 Bf4 20.Rc2 Rhe8
21.Re2 Kb8 22.Rfe1 Rxe2 23.Nxe2 Bd6 24.Rd1 Re8 25.Ned4 Nxd4 26.Nxd4 Re5
27.Nf3 Re2 28.Rd2 Rxd2 29.Nxd2 Kc8 30.Nc4 Kd7 31.g3 b5 32.Ne3 g5 33.Ng4
Ke7 34.Kg2 f5 35.Ne3 Kf6 36.g4 f4 37.Nf5 Ke5 38.Nxd6 cxd6 39.Kf3 Kxd5 40.
h4 gxh4 41.Kxf4 Kd4 42.g5 Kd3 43.Kf3 b4 44.Kg4 Kc2 45.f4 h3 46.f5 Kxb2 47.
Kxh3 a5 48.g6 hxg6 49.fxg6 a4 50.g7 b3 51.g8=Q bxa2 52.Qg2+ Kb3 53.Qd5+
Kb2 54.Qb5+ Ka3 55.Qd3+ Kb2 56.Qe2+ Kb3 57.Qd3+ Kb2 58.Qd4+ Kb1 59.Qb4+
Kc1 60.Qxa4 Kb2 61.Qb4+ Kc2 62.Qa3 Kb1 63.Qb3+ Kc1 64.Qxa2 Kd1 65.Kg3 Ke1
66.Qc2 d5 67.Kf3 d4 68.Qe2# 1-0