Chess System Tal II & Engine Style

[pedrox]

FXCHESS PLUS

http://www.fxinteractive.com/p003/p003.htm

I have the FxChess version, comes with openings book and endgames. The version of the engine is the 2.52. The program is in Spanish.

FxChess Plus seems the same but also it have versions for Palm and Pocket PC.

Best,

Pedro

[mclane]

purple software was the company that bought CSTAL and oxford softworks from chris whittington. but purple software is bancrott.

[cornetmike]

This website: http://www.rebel.nl/authors.htm seems to suggest that CSTal II had a 520 megabyte opening book, plus a smaller "gambit" book. But..520 megabytes seems huge for an opening book!! Fritz 8 has an enormous opening book, and includes many obscure lines that ECO, MCO-14, and BCO don't even cover. And Fritz 8 uses only 40.66 megabytes of disc space, including its large book. Maybe the website meant to say "50 MB," not 520...I'm curious. Did CSTal II actually have a 520MB opening book?

regards
Mikey

[fern]

No.
Original version and publisher was Oxford Software, owned by the software author, Chris Wittington. He later sold his company with all the stuff and so it came at the hands of Purple and then, I guess, to many other houses.
Tal II is the very last version, here is not a 2,5 version. What really exist is a patch for II version IF yu bought it in Oxford. I believe Purple one came with it into its bowels.

My best
fernando

[GenoM]

many thanks for your explanation, Thorsten

[cornetmike]

A very interesting explanation, Thorsten. Thank you!

regards, Mikey

p.s. CSTal just beat me....again!

[mclane]

i looked it up a few moments ago:

CSTAL large.book = 496 MB
CSTAL2 = 496 MB

[Oscar L]

May CSTAL2 engine be used in Fritz or Arena gui?

[mclane]

no. its only running within the CSTAL GUI, what a pity.
if you have 2 PCs you can use the auto232 between the 2 machines to bring it running into another UCI GUI.

[Oscar L]

With those all comments about the style, it is a pity, yes.

Is there a screenshot of CSTAL GUI available?