Legacy hardware emulator chess championship?

[Stan Arts]

Earlier this year I coded a chess program for the Commodore64 for no reason at all. It was winter and nostalgia must of hit. It's the system I grew up with and got me into programming when I was 8 years old.

Must admit, it's more fun from a programming perspective than it should be.

Nowadays there's high quality emulators available for any imaginable hardware.

Wonder if there's more people interested in such frivolity and if so, we could hold a championship of some sort on ancient hardware of choice and have more of an encouragement to do so.

Say, once a year on varying hardware by vote. Ofcourse, on PC is possible too with an emulator that simply limits memory and cycles a lot.

[abik]

Earlier this year I coded a chess program for the Commodore 64 for no reason at all. It was winter and nostalgia must of hit. It's the system I grew up with and got me into programming when I was 8 years old.

I love the Commodore 64. I still have my old one, and every time I see it, it brings back good childhood memories on programming. A while back I ported Peter Jennings' famous Microchess, which was originally written for the KIM-1, to work on the Commodore 64. You can find the modified source, together with my cross-assembler to generate a T64 file (or any other preferred format to run it on the real C64 or an emulator) on my C64 webpage. You probably can also find other chess programs in the C64 archives to get a few more sparring partners.

[Stan Arts]

I love the Commodore 64. I still have my old one, and every time I see it, it brings back good childhood memories on programming. A while back I ported Peter Jennings' famous Microchess, which was originally written for the KIM-1, to work on the Commodore 64. You can find the modified source, together with my cross-assembler to generate a T64 file (or any other preferred format to run it on the real C64 or an emulator) on my C64 webpage. You probably can also find other chess programs in the C64 archives to get a few more sparring partners.

Nice site! Will have a look at your cross assembler. Using that can certainly make life a little easier.

Absolutely incredible to write something chess-like in less than a KB.

Indeed my old C64 is still in decent working condition too and perhaps more surprising, most of the 25 year old 5.25 inch floppies still load fine without data loss. Datablocks the size of fists.

Was also my introduction to chess back then and my favourite program was Grandmaster. No frills and played fairly well. Really well I thought because I had no idea and beating it really did make me feel close to a grandmaster. Always thought en passant was a bug in the program and did not learn that was an actual move till atleast ten years later.

[Vinvin]

Always thought en passant was a bug in the program and did not learn that was an actual move till atleast ten years later.

Nice story, Stan !

[Gerd Isenberg]

Was also my introduction to chess back then and my favourite program was Grandmaster. No frills and played fairly well. Really well I thought because I had no idea and beating it really did make me feel close to a grandmaster.

Hi Stan,

seems a nice program for that time, spacious mind has it in his collection as well:
http://www.spacious-mind.com/html/commo ... _ches.html

Do you or someone else know who the author was?

Thanks,
Gerd

[Stan Arts]

Hi Stan,

seems a nice program for that time, spacious mind has it in his collection as well:
http://www.spacious-mind.com/html/commo ... _ches.html

Do you or someone else know who the author was?

Thanks,
Gerd

Hi Gerd!

Hard to find much info about it. This site http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Grand_Master
says it's coded by Fritz Schäfer. His name indeed comes up with other C64 software and Kingsoft.
http://www.videospielgeschichten.de/kingsoft.html
Seems he is alive. http://de.linkedin.com/pub/fritz-sch%C3%A4fer/3a/49/a16 Maybe we can ask him about it.

Pretty fun, running your C64 emulator at some 1000x speed or however fast you can run it without crashing, Grandmaster or whichever C64 chessprogram at highest difficulty and the many minutes per move become seconds and they blitz out 4-5-6 "ply" moves in the middlegame. Quality of moves really does go up slightly except for endgames that are terrible for programs of this era but still amazing. People at the time would of liked such a speed button.

[mvk]

My 1st chess program was on the c64... I didn't know enough about the algorithms, so I didn't get further than just rendering the board (using assembly). I don't think I have the floppy disks anymore. I will double-check with my parent's house during xmas. If I can find them and get them to work, I will take the challenge. Very low chance.

Once in a while I do have the urge to go back and do it "right" on the c64. But the time it would take, it seems so pointless... And no good way to communicate with other programs...

As far as a competition, I'm more in for something more accessible, like a limited-resources JVM. (Say: .jar <= 64kB and heap+stack <= 1MB, if that is possible).

I have also been thinking about the Arduino, but interfacing is complicated.

[Gerd Isenberg]

Hi Stan,

seems a nice program for that time, spacious mind has it in his collection as well:
http://www.spacious-mind.com/html/commo ... _ches.html

Do you or someone else know who the author was?

Thanks,
Gerd

Hi Gerd!

Hard to find much info about it. This site http://plus4world.powweb.com/software/Grand_Master
says it's coded by Fritz Schäfer. His name indeed comes up with other C64 software and Kingsoft.
http://www.videospielgeschichten.de/kingsoft.html
Seems he is alive. http://de.linkedin.com/pub/fritz-sch%C3%A4fer/3a/49/a16 Maybe we can ask him about it.

Pretty fun, running your C64 emulator at some 1000x speed or however fast you can run it without crashing, Grandmaster or whichever C64 chessprogram at highest difficulty and the many minutes per move become seconds and they blitz out 4-5-6 "ply" moves in the middlegame. Quality of moves really does go up slightly except for endgames that are terrible for programs of this era but still amazing. People at the time would of liked such a speed button.

Great finding, Thanks. I will ask Fritz Schäfer about some details of his program.