Should Computer Chess Club get a dedicated chess computer subforum

[mclane]

I came to computerchess in 1978.
In those days were mainly dedicated chess computers and chess software on homecomputers that were often weaker then the specialized dedicated chess computers.
I know that on universities programmers had better Resources and bigger hardware and began with computerchess many years earlier then in the commercial area of dedicated chess computers and vintage software on home computers.
IMO this is not a reason not to discuss these early university chess programs in the subforum dedicated chess computers and vintage software.

Its all our past and only if we know our past we can plan and honor the future.

Thats why i would like to get a subforum for these topics.
It does not really fit between stockfish, lc0 or todays hardware.

Therefore i would like to get a subforum not to pollute the normal forums with “off topic” in the eyes of todays computerchess freaks.


Please do the poll.
Thanks.

[jefk]

dedicated chess computers still are interesting, i think, besides the Dgt type
stuff (eg Chessnut), and they have improved compared with the oldies.

So yes, 1) such (sometimes expensive) toys could be discussed in a separate subforum,
not so important for me but it may add to clarity/structure of the overall forum

2) as for vintage software, the distinction between abandon ware and tools which
sometimes still are updated once in a few years, is hard to make.

and 3) some general GUI software could imo be added as topic for such a new subforum
(instead of only enginesenginesenginesengines ad nauseam vs enginesenginesengines)

[towforce]

I voted "yes" just because it's astonishing that the great engine writers of old were able to pull such phenomenal chess play (by my standards!) out of primitive 8-bit CPUs (plus everything else needed: in contrast to today's SOCs, these 8-bit CPUs could do precisely nothing without a bunch of other chips wired up to them).

Thanks to Franz Huber, anyone can now play against many of these dedicated machines: he has written a program that emulates them very accurately.

[Graham Banks]

Of course there should be subforum for the dedicateds.

[gordonr]

As well as reading here, I read: https://www.hiarcs.net/forums/viewforum.php?f=1 which is for dedicated chess computer chat. Personally, I'd rather people used that forum since it has years of posts that can be searched; a community of people interested in and owning dedicated computers; etc. I'd be encouraging people to use and contribute to that forum.

[CRoberson]

I bought a chessnut EVO recently and love it. Bought my first dedicated unit in Jan 1988: CXG Super Crown.

[mclane]

Thanks for participation so far.
We could all present our machines and games and talk about the vintage machines.

[cpeters]

Yes, compartmentalize. Would be the ninth subforum then. More feel-good bubbles!

The site https://www.schachcomputer.info is a nice place for infos for chesscomputers (as the name implies). Why the effort to mirror it when CCC-General Topics would also be fitting?

greetings

[mclane]

Because this Schachcomputer.info is a german forum and not anybody in the world speaks german.

Computerchess club is international.

[cpeters]

Within reason it's polyglot over there but ok.