Unique Rebel hardware from Ed's attic

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Eelco de Groot
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Unique Rebel hardware from Ed's attic

Post by Eelco de Groot »

Please have a look before it all disappears into Steve's vaults never to be seen again :) !

Ed Schröder also posted the below on the Rybka forum but not yet here and as there are a lot of ancient tabletop collector's here, Mark Uniacke is one too I believe, I'm sure you do not want to miss taking at least a good look. Crosspost:
In case you missed the announcement on Talkchess I am holding an auction. Since things go incredibly fast (it's just 20 hours online) the auction will only last for one week. I don´t want to blamed for why don´t you told me, so here is the link:

http://www.top-5000.nl/dedicated.htm

Ed
Careful! Even moonlit dewdrops,
If you’re lured to watch,
Are a wall before the truth.

- Sogyo (18th century)
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Steve B
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Re: Unique Rebel hardware from Ed's attic

Post by Steve B »

Eelco de Groot wrote:Please have a look before it all disappears into Steve's vaults never to be seen again :) !
Hi Eelco

i have most of the items already ..the items i didnt already own are prototype items which don't really interest me but i was mildly interested in the Turbo Kit so i contacted him
his first post seemed to imply he found these items lying around in his attic and rather then throwing them away he would be giving them away to collectors interested in the old computers ..but i did offer to pay for it anyway
he eventually decided to hold this anonymous highest bidder auction for the items:

http://www.top-5000.nl/auction2.htm

the current high bid for the Turbo Kit is just about what i would have paid for it

His Prototype Eproms for the Tasc R30 seems to be the hottest item
Ed mentioned he never released these eproms to Tasc because of all the problems Tasc had legally
Tasc was sued for copyright infringement involving their Smart Board\Piece Recognition
technology
(dont recall the Company suing Tasc ?)..They lost the suit and were forced to close down
so now..years later .. he is selling them....giving the buyer the exclusive right to make copies for resale..
i imagine Ed has the permission to do this?
Lang still sells his London Eproms for Mephisto units but i would imagine he got all of the proper permissions from Mephisto back in 1996
even if there is no legal permission .. Tasc is not in existence any longer so there is no one to complain..

personally i wouldn't touch a Tasc Unit outfitted with a copied eprom from someone who acquired the original because he was the highest bidder in an auction..but thats just me.. and i imagine that initially dozens of copies will be sold by the auction winner ..he best sell them fast though
the value of these copied eproms will plummet fast because the real fun starts when those buyers start making copies and start selling copies of the copied eproms ....and so on and so on
i see copied chess computer eproms for sale on Ebay all the time
they usually sell for next to nothing

i must admit though ..it is refreshing to see something new and controversial regarding the oldies ..been a long time since anything newsworthy transpired
Anyway ..i wont be joining in on the bidding ...so its all yours
:)

Ancient Collector Regards
Steve
xchessg
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Re: Unique Rebel hardware from Ed's attic

Post by xchessg »

Steve B wrote:
His Prototype Eproms for the Tasc R30 seems to be the hottest item
Ed mentioned he never released these eproms to Tasc because of all the problems Tasc had legally
Tasc was sued for copyright infringement involving their Smart Board\Piece Recognition
technology
(dont recall the Company suing Tasc ?)..They lost the suit and were forced to close down
so now..years later .. he is selling them....giving the buyer the exclusive right to make copies for resale..
i imagine Ed has the permission to do this?
Lang still sells his London Eproms for Mephisto units but i would imagine he got all of the proper permissions from Mephisto back in 1996
even if there is no legal permission .. Tasc is not in existence any longer so there is no one to complain

i must admit though ..it is refreshing to see something new and controversial regarding the oldies ..been a long time since anything newsworthy transpired

Steve
Hi,

It most certainly was an event, if you have a look at the highest bids... If I'm not mistaken, the R30 eproms went for 1500 Euros. I just hope they turn out to be working without (timemanagement) bugs. I would certainly be interested to have a pair.

The company who sued Tasc was the proprietor of the Bavaria patents, so that must have been Saitek if i'm not mistaken. Since the Tasc R30's wasn't theirs, I guess they can live with new software for these old things which still sell for the new value today. Still, Ed kept on the save side with selling them as he did. :twisted:

So, we hopefully can look forward to an release of Gideon on the R30.
Would be nice
If would could also have a Hiarcs version on the Sparc/Renaissance,that would be even nicer... But there Saitek is even more involved i guess...

Now, w'ere waiting for Richard Lang cleaning out his attic, might produce some Turniermaschine or wundermaschine amongst other niceties.

Chances are he wouldn't even think about giving the stuff away...

Keep on dreaming regards

Xavier
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Steve B
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Re: Unique Rebel hardware from Ed's attic

Post by Steve B »

xchessg wrote:
The company who sued Tasc was the proprietor of the Bavaria patents, so that must have been Saitek if i'm not mistaken. Since the Tasc R30's wasn't theirs, I guess they can live with new software for these old things which still sell for the new value today. Still, Ed kept on the save side with selling them as he did. :twisted:
Hi
interestingly...
When Ruud started selling his Resurrection modules in 2005 ..he sought permission from Saitek..he did receive permission but they imposed the restriction that he could only sell a limited number of modules .
so Saitek cared even in 2005..years after Mephisto closed its doors..
perhaps Ed waiting for many years and then offloading his Tasc prototype Eproms now ..at this late date ..is different because back in 2005 Saitek was still selling the Senator modules in the Exclusive board..and now..no one is selling brand new Tasc Units

As i mentioned earlier..once the winner of the Prototype auction starts selling copies of the eproms and then those buyers start selling copies ..all hell could break loose

i am not certain if Saitek has any legal rights it can assert from the Tasc lawsuit.. or if they were even involved then.. but if they do..
we could be looking at a Potentially ..

Huge Law Suits Regards
Steve
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Post by spacious_mind »

Hi Everyone,

Micha, Christian and myself are the fortunate ones who won this auction. We joined up as a Team because we wanted to ensure that should we win, we could ensure that the ROM's would be made available to anyone in the world at a fair price and that no gouging would take place.

Since we really don't want to offend the Hiarcs Owners by advertizing here which would be inapropriate, here is a link to the Schachcomputer.Info homepage where you can read about the ROM's and you can decide if you have an interest or not and at the same time decide if we are approaching this in a fair and professional way or not.

Suffice it say that Micha, Christian and myself are treating ourselves in the exact same way as anyone else who may have an interest in the Gideon 3.1 ROM's for the R30.

Anyway enough said... Here is the Link where you can read all about in English and in German.

http://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/f2 ... -4374.html

Best Regards,

Nick
Nick
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Post by ricard60 »

Hi Nick,

This 3.1 version of gideon is the same engine that Ed release just some time ago as an UCI engine and it is called gideon pro?
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Post by spacious_mind »

ricard60 wrote:Hi Nick,

This 3.1 version of gideon is the same engine that Ed release just some time ago as an UCI engine and it is called gideon pro?
Hi Ricardo,

Gideo Pro was a software for the 486 in 1993. So I would guess that Ed used the Gideon Pro software to convert to UCI.

It is possible or even very likely that the base program would be similar since I doubt he would rewrite everything. However since Gideon 3.1 Madrid played in 1992 it is also very probable that Gideon Pro from 1993 had further chess improvements. Since this was a living for Ed and very competitive with regards to bragging rights, I am sure the programmers worked on their programs all the time to make them better.

But only Ed could tell us for sure what he did back then.

Regards

Nick
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Post by chessguru »

Hi Ricardo,
ricard60 wrote:This 3.1 version of gideon is the same engine that Ed release just some time ago as an UCI engine and it is called gideon pro?
i think there are differences. Perhaps only very small...

An example:

BT-2450/2630 Position 5
  • M. Judowitsch, 1976 - 1.Ka6

    [fen]3B4/8/2B5/1K6/8/8/3p4/3k4 w - - 0 1[/fen]

    Image Tasc R30 Gideon 3.1 - find the correct move in search depth 14 (Hash 512KB)

    Image Mephisto Gideon Professional (1993) for Winboard and UCI - find the move in search depth 10 (Hash 1MB)
    (1.Ka6 Ke2 2.Lb5+ Kf2 3.Lb6+ Kf3 4.Le8 | +/- (1.00) Tiefe: 10)
Steve, what do you think? Hash problem or differences in the programs?

Regards
Micha
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Post by Steve B »

chessguru wrote:Hi Ricardo,
ricard60 wrote:This 3.1 version of gideon is the same engine that Ed release just some time ago as an UCI engine and it is called gideon pro?
i think there are differences. Perhaps only very small...

An example:

BT-2450/2630 Position 5
  • M. Judowitsch, 1976 - 1.Ka6

    [fen]3B4/8/2B5/1K6/8/8/3p4/3k4 w - - 0 1[/fen]

    Image Tasc R30 Gideon 3.1 - find the correct move in search depth 14 (Hash 512KB)

    Image Mephisto Gideon Professional (1993) for Winboard and UCI - find the move in search depth 10 (Hash 1MB)
    (1.Ka6 Ke2 2.Lb5+ Kf2 3.Lb6+ Kf3 4.Le8 | +/- (1.00) Tiefe: 10)
Steve, what do you think? Hash problem or differences in the programs?

Regards
Micha
Hi Micha
well i am not the one to ask about UCI engines or winboard or anything about the PC Engines
i am a total novice when it comes to these things
besides..i am still struggling to achieve a decent level of knowledge about the oldies
:P

Tasc R30 Gideon SB20 Regards
Steve
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Post by chessguru »

Steve B wrote:well i am not the one to ask about UCI engines or winboard or anything about pc Engines
i am a total novice when it comes to these things
Come on, Steve. You have a lot of experience. You´re in business, many years. 8)
Tasc R30 Gideon SB20 Regards
:D very good... Life is a dream... :wink:


Sometimes, Dreams Come True.

Tasc R30 Gideon SB30 Regards :P
Micha
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Post by ricard60 »

Hi Nick,Micha and Steve,

Thanks for the answers, with this we can make Steve go in to the world of UCI and winboard, i know it will be easy for him. Yeah probably is the same base software and the difference is hardware, tasc machine did not have the same hardware as a 486. In the example shown by Micha there is a dfference in hash. Well maybe Ed can give us the correct answer.

Happy hollidays
Ricardo
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ed
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Post by ed »

Hi, I think I can answer this one :lol:

I made a mistake (actually a couple) making Gideon Pro WB/UCI compatible. Usually mistakes have the tendency going down in elo, not so with this one :wink: elo went up!

To make a long story short, I took the then current ProDeo (thus with the WB/UCI software) and replaced "Search" and "Evaluation" with the Gideon Pro source code of 1993. In the process I forgot a couple of things which made the WB/UCI Gideon way too strong, approx. 50-75 elo.

For instance I forgot to replace the old 1993 hash table implementation which at that time (1993) was far from perfect. There were a few other forgotten much smaller issues as well, but leaving the ProDeo hash table code was a big mistake elowise.
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Post by ricard60 »

Thanks for the answer Ed, so that´s why this gideon pro UCI/WB is stronger than the original gideon pro of 1993.

Happy hollidays
new old UCI/WB gideon pro regards
Ricardo
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