Emulation of old (OLD!) chess computers and programs

[JeffB]

The pieces on your Psion screen strongly resemble the Excalibur NY Times Deluxe and somewhat similar to the Mensa Chess. It was the only decent LCD design I've seen. (Most LCD dedicates have crappy predefined segments that when active in various combinations are supposed to resemble chess pieces. Even Saitek and Novag used that structure. Yuck.)

[BenRedic]

I have also found what appears to be a Jim Ablett compile of Cray Blitz for Intel processors, but I have not had any luck running it. The program starts up just fine, but when it is supposed to start evaluating the position it just crashes on every computer I have tested it.

Don't know if this is solved somewhere but I downloaded it and tried it under Windows 7 in VIRTUALBOX. After I changed the properties of the "blitz" executable file to compatibility mode "Windows XP" it didn't crash anymore.

Runs fine

That's weird. I tried again just now, I still can't get it to work.

I tried the two versions currently at http://kirr.homeunix.org/chess/engines/ ... Y%20BLITZ/. They both have the same name (cray_blitz_49h_ja), but file size and date seems to differ. Don't know what the difference. I have tried under Win 7, XP compatibility mode, as well as virtual machines (VirtualBox) with XP, 2000 and 98. I even tried Wine under Linux.

It crashes as soon as I enter a move:

Code: Select all

 running on a cray ymp

 Cray Blitz version 49h
 what is your name?
BenRedic
 are you continuing your last game?
no
 should I play white?
no
 your move, BenRedic
e4
 your move  1. e4
 time control phase one reached ( 0:30 per move).
forrtl: severe (157): Program Exception - access violation
Image              PC        Routine            Line        Source
blitz.exe          004955F3  Unknown               Unknown  Unknown
blitz.exe          0040A50E  Unknown               Unknown  Unknown
blitz.exe          004A5EFB  Unknown               Unknown  Unknown
blitz.exe          004636D4  Unknown               Unknown  Unknown

Do you have any idea what could be the difference between your setup and mine? Did you get another version of this program from some other source? What kind of CPU are you using?

[mclane]

What about CHAOS or Black Knight.
As far as I know they were B strategy.

[toaopeter]

Do you have any idea what could be the difference between your setup and mine? Did you get another version of this program from some other source? What kind of CPU are you using?

I am very sorry. I completely forgot this thread a few years ago and I didn't get any mail that reminded me to take a look.
But still and even today my version does not crash. I just tested it on my Debian Linux, running a Windows 7 machine with VirtualBox.
I don't think I have a different version than yours. If you like I can .zip my version and send it to you by mail.

And if you still get this error let's compare step by step. (If this is of any interest after all these years.)

Best,
Peter

[Scally]

Hi Guys,

Pardon my interest in this subject, however I downloaded the file using the link provided and it works straight out the box on my Picochess System running with wine:

Code: Select all

pi@picochess:/opt/picochess/engines/armv7l/windows32 $ • /cray-blitz
0050:err: explorer:initialize_display_settings Failed to query current display settings for L"\
111. I\DISPLAYI".
running on a cray ymp
Cray Blitz version 49h what is your name?
Scally
are you continuing your last game?
no
should I play white?
no
your move, Scally e4
your move 1. @4
time control phase one reached ( 0:30 per move).
clock time was :00 time limit 0:30.
depth time
eval variation
1
0:00
-0.315
d5 Nc3 dxe4 Nxe4 ...
1->
0:00
-0.315
d5 Nc3 dxe4 Nxe4 ...
2
0:00
-0.315
d5 Nc3 dxe4 Nxe4 ...
2->
0:00
-0.315
d5 Nc3 dxe4 Nxe4 ...
0:00
-0.203
d5 Bb5+ c6 Bd3 dxe4 Bxe4
За
3
3->
4
4a
4
4a
4
4->
5
5->
6
6a
6
6->
7
7a
0:00
++@
e5
0:00
-0.180
e5 Nc3 Nf6
0:00
-0.180
e5 Nc3 Nf6
0:00
-0.346
e5 Nc3 Nf6 Nf3
0:00
++0
d5
0:00
-0.306
d5 exd5 Oxd5 Nc3 0d8
0:00
++0
N£6
0:00
-0.255
Nf6 e5 Ne4 Nc3
0:00
-0.255
Nf6 e5 Ne4 Nc3
0:00
-0.120
Nf6 Nc3 e5 Nf3 Nc6
0:00
-0.120
Nf6 Nc3 e5 Nf3 Nc6
0:00
-0.216
Nf6 e5 Nd5 Nc3 e6 Nge2
0:00
++0
e5
0:00
-0.165
e5 Nf3 Nc6 Nc3 Nf6 BC4 ...
0:00
-0.165
e5 Nf3 Nc6 Nc3 Nf6 BC4 ...
0:01
-0.116
e5 Nf3 Nc6 Nc3 Nf6 Bc4 d6
0:02
++0
Nf6
0:02
-0.114 Nf6 Nc3 e6 e5 Nd5 Qf3 Nxc3 Qxc3 ...
7->
8
8a
0:02
-0.114
Nf6 Nc3 e6 e5 Nd5 0f3 Nxc3 Oxc3
0:06
-0.159
Nf6 e5 Nd5 Nf3 e6 c4 Nf4 Nc3
0:08
++0
Nc6
0:13
-0.153
Nc6 Nc3 N£6 Bb5 Nd4 Bc4 e5 N£3
8->
0:14
-0.153
Nc6 Nc3 Nf6 Bb5 Nd4 Bc4 e5 Nf3
9
0:28
-0.110 Nc6 Nc3 Nf6 Nf3 e5 Bc4 Bc5 0-0 0-0
time 0:30 0:00
1.0p nodes:
2769447 h 12% 82% 75% 91764 ps
my move
1. ... Nc6
clock time was 0:30
your move, Scally 

Cheers,

Al

[toaopeter]

I see they have a CDC. Maybe I get to play with Chess 4.6?
[/quote]

Well it finally happened. I downloaded the source code of CHESS 4.6 from CHM and sent it to Kevin at the Nostalgic Computing Center. He checked it but said that it is useless because of some wrong characters and spacing in the source code. It may be that the source code was a paper print-out and CHM digitized it with OCR software which created some errors. But this is just speculation.

BUT THE GOOD NEWS IS:
Kevin found a version of CHESS 4.9 buried deep in his archives. He was able to compile it and made it available to the public today.
Yes! This is the first time - as far as I know - that this classic milestone has been brought back to life.

And YOU can test it by yourself.

Head over to http://www.nostalgiccomputing.org and you can log in to a CDC Cyber machine running NOS 2.8.7 with a simple click as a guest. Then type 'chess' and here you are!

And this is not all.
You can build your own version on your PC by using this link: https://github.com/kej715/DtCyber

This is a great day for historic computer chess.

Cheers,

Peter