Steve B wrote:Mike Watters wrote:
Excuse some of us if we remain sceptical when there are so many contradictions and unanswered questions, hence the debate on numerous threads here.
Mike
Ron can answer for himself but I can tell you that listing obvious clones does not contradict his statements
it was obvious to me that Ron means computers produced by Excalibur and on one else such as the GM and Mirage
which what the various bebates centered around
Take The High Road Regards
Steve
Hi Steve,
Yes Ron included Mirage as an afterthought with an indirect response when I suggested as such in my email.
His original email clearly states that he is the programmer of Grandmaster. Mirage was manufactured by Krypton therefore there are lot of gaps that Ron might hopefully fill in with regards to his connection with Krypton and how all that fit together since we have two claimants for Mirage being Eric White and Krypton and Excalibur.
Mike is also correct with the user manual statement. The manuals for Igor & Mirage and Ivan (have not checked Grandmaster) all clearly originate from an author that wrote them starting with Legend & Concerto in 1992 for CXG which is a Horvath, therefore there as Mike correctly pointed out there are discrepancies all over the place and not just with the obvious Novag/Excalibur examples.
No one is questioning the influence from Ron Nelson and his major role in the history of dedicated chess computers.
We are just hoping to fill in the gaps correctly for proper preservation of history rather than vagueness and assumption. It would be too much of a shame to go down that path of inaccuracies.
You never know maybe 200 years from now there is a nostalgic renaissance for chess and just like a Mona Lisa what we write today is followed as gospel tomorrow. I don't know about you but I refuse to lead people down a wrong garden path which at face value Ron statements are with regards to the three that Mike highlighted in his post.
We are hoping to have these gaps filled in from someone who truly knows what his role was and who else played a part, Ron's statement as it reads disclaims everybody but himself and I am sure that was not his intent.
It would be nice to know when Ron joined Excalibur and what his first projects were. It would also be nice to know his involvement with Eric White and David Levy at Krypton. Mirage was conceived around 1993/1994 by Krypton. That would be around the time of Ron working at Mephisto/Saitek or just leaving.
Excalbur no longer exists therefore is it so wrong to ask for some knowledge and facts?
At least 3 different chess authored programs came out at around the very same time, on at least 3 different hardware, how would this be possible to have one person author all three original chess programs unless the origins were from 3 different original chess authors. No one is even disputing enhancements made to root programs as per the Belle thing.
We are all trying to put the right people behind the computers. The vision, concept and implementation we all know belongs 100% to Ron Nelson from a certain point onwards at Excalibur no one is disputing this.
We are trying to find out chess program authorship whether it be:
Nelson, Horvath & Thompson on some or
Nelson & someone else on others or
Ron Nelson on specifics
If Ron Nelson used Thompson Attack tables then that alone means a shared authorship to be correct in how we name chess authors. We know with Mirage many things indicate towards Horvath, what would be wrong to admit and name it all correctly for the chess program.
All this requires some explanation.
Best regards