This is an ESP32 microcontroller running my PDP11/70 emulator running UNIX 7 running the included chess program
I have a question about the chess-program: does anyone know if the chess program from UNIX 7 ever participated in a tournament? And is its strength known?
The PDP-11 was a 16-bit computer launched in 1970, and some people say it was the best-selling minicomputer ever.
Having a quick look at its simulators, a lot of them seem to be on microcontrollers rather than on Windows (the top result for "PDP-11 emulator" is a JavaScript program to be fair). I wonder why? My guess: microcontrollers are the preferred platform for the kind of people that love the PDP-11 enough to run emulators of this computer.
Human chess is partly about tactics and strategy, but mostly about memory
towforce wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:24 am
Interesting!
The PDP-11 was a 16-bit computer launched in 1970, and some people say it was the best-selling minicomputer ever.
Having a quick look at its simulators, a lot of them seem to be on microcontrollers rather than on Windows (the top result for "PDP-11 emulator" is a JavaScript program to be fair). I wonder why? My guess: microcontrollers are the preferred platform for the kind of people that love the PDP-11 enough to run emulators of this computer.
Well to me it felt like a real challenge, something that would be difficult to do. Because of the resource constraints. Eventually the difficulty was that I was not familiar with the PDP11 platform and not the embedded device (ESP32 SDK is very easy to work with).
towforce wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:24 am
Interesting!
The PDP-11 was a 16-bit computer launched in 1970, and some people say it was the best-selling minicomputer ever.
Having a quick look at its simulators, a lot of them seem to be on microcontrollers rather than on Windows (the top result for "PDP-11 emulator" is a JavaScript program to be fair). I wonder why? My guess: microcontrollers are the preferred platform for the kind of people that love the PDP-11 enough to run emulators of this computer.
Well to me it felt like a real challenge, something that would be difficult to do. Because of the resource constraints. Eventually the difficulty was that I was not familiar with the PDP11 platform and not the embedded device (ESP32 SDK is very easy to work with).
Ironic!
One of the most famous Chess programs of the 1970s, Belle, was written on a PDP-11 by the famous Ken Thompson.
towforce wrote: ↑Thu Jun 20, 2024 10:24 am
Interesting!
The PDP-11 was a 16-bit computer launched in 1970, and some people say it was the best-selling minicomputer ever.
Having a quick look at its simulators, a lot of them seem to be on microcontrollers rather than on Windows (the top result for "PDP-11 emulator" is a JavaScript program to be fair). I wonder why? My guess: microcontrollers are the preferred platform for the kind of people that love the PDP-11 enough to run emulators of this computer.
Well to me it felt like a real challenge, something that would be difficult to do. Because of the resource constraints. Eventually the difficulty was that I was not familiar with the PDP11 platform and not the embedded device (ESP32 SDK is very easy to work with).
Ironic!
One of the most famous Chess programs of the 1970s, Belle, was written on a PDP-11 by the famous Ken Thompson.
I'm not sure yet. I'm actually trying to figure that out
I did some grepping through the source-code but could not find any details.
The readme says "This program is not the one that won the U. S. championship.".
For anyone who want to try Ken Thompson's BSD chess I have compiled the Python PDP-11 emulator available here > https://github.com/amakukha/PyPDP11
into a native windows executable.
