YoYo's Fidelity Serial Number Theory

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spacious_mind
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Post by spacious_mind »

Mike Watters wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:I also think it is possible contrary of how we are told what to believe, that Mephisto based on business practices that happen all the time, their only reason to buy Fidelity was to remove a competition so they worked on that strategy but of course they would never tell you that.

Because it is strange at how much was produced in 1988 and how starting in 1989 Fidelity was only allowed to produce the more expensive products. Other than the Designer 1500 nothing for the mass market was made. Of course it is easy to blame Fidelity for not meeting expectations if that is your mindset from the outset :) Of course Mephisto had engineers to oversee Fidelity in the U.S. but those engineers did not seem to be doing much :)

So maybe it was a deliberate run down of Fidelity which also failed because Mephisto's US market presence did not really increase for their own products. Could be a deliberate run down of Fidelity and of course US Management push back by Fidelity in coming on board with Mephisto US strategy.

Things are not always as they seem or officially publicized. Ask a politician :)

Best regards
Hi Nick

Now let me understand this theory of yours.

So Sid Samole is still in charge of Fidelity from the moment it was sold to Mephisto (H & G) in 1989 until he is replaced by a German on 1st September 1991. Running it, we are told (?), like an independent company. However through 1990 and 1991 all the time Sid is really overseeing the destruction of his company, as he is in cahoots with Mephisto.
The purpose is to destroy the competition Fidelity used to provide in Germany and to leave the US market wide open for Mephisto. :twisted:
A sort of joint suicide mission, handing the market over to Saitek a while later. Success!! Which then leaves the way wide open for Excalibur to sell lots of cheap Chinese stuff, as if it were made in the USA. Cunning. :D

(Computer Chess Reports 1991 Vol.2 No2)

Dazed regards
Mike
Hi Mike,

The Germans were there from day 1, sitting side by side with Fidelity. That is how it works. I know I have worked for German companies, as well as British and now I work for a Spanish Company and they all act in the same manner, regardless of size. So do US companies for that matter.

As in any takeover, the financials would have been scrutinized, the order books would have been scrutinized, the capital investments would have been scrutinized, the assets would have been scrutinized. You don't go into something like this blindly. You have a plan.

The moment it was sold it was no longer in Sid Samole's control and there would be Germans sitting at Fidelity. It is normal to keep a figure head hanging around for a short time and probably part of the settlement. German companies just like Spanish or English companies have absolutely no hesitation in sending over their people to run it and fix what is needed to be fixed in order to secure their multi-million dollar investment.

In this case it did not happen because they did not fix a thing and watched or should I say let it run to the ground.

Either that, or Mephisto was run by a bunch of incompetent accountants and Lawyers. Mephisto was big enough to have a competent Team. They knew what they were doing. What they couldn't forecast however was the recession towards the end of the 80's and early 90's and the increasing lack of interest in chess computers.

They made the decision to buy too late and as soon as they had it they realized they didn't want it and that is how it goes.

What's the saying...the victor rewrites history to suit his needs. Well do you really think that Mephisto would stand there and praise the fallen when the alternative makes you look like a tyrant and fool.

They just did what the romans did and rewrote everything to suit their image... regards

ps... what seems to have been forgotten in all this is that there were probably hundreds of people that wanted to come to work in a place where by now they had worked for almost 10 years and this was taken away from them pretty much overnight after the takeover.
Nick
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Post by Mike Watters »

Hi Nick

The truth of the matter is that Fidelity is already becoming unprofitable when Mephisto buy it. Which is why Samole sells it. Overheads are too high, sales too low. Mephisto pay too much for it ($7M). The market gets steadily worse and Fidelity lose over $3M in 1991. Mephisto blame Fidelity for problems, Fidelity blame Mephisto. Nothing is going to work but Mephisto's mistakes hasten the end.

That is what the published sources said at the time and no reason to rewrite history.

All the best
Mike
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Post by spacious_mind »

Mike Watters wrote:Hi Nick

The truth of the matter is that Fidelity is already becoming unprofitable when Mephisto buy it. Which is why Samole sells it. Overheads are too high, sales too low. Mephisto pay too much for it ($7M). The market gets steadily worse and Fidelity lose over $3M in 1991. Mephisto blame Fidelity for problems, Fidelity blame Mephisto. Nothing is going to work but Mephisto's mistakes hasten the end.

That is what the published sources said at the time and no reason to rewrite history.

All the best
Mike
Yes, you summarized it pretty well. A key point to remember though is that no one forced Mephisto to buy Fidelity. They wanted to. Regarding the $7 Mio. I am pretty sure that was negotiated and Sid probably started with $15 Mio and settled with $7 Mio. So at that point both sides happily shook hands and Fidelity became Mephisto. That $7 Mio value was what it was worth to Mephisto.

Their problem, their Management and their success or failure, to do as they wished.

Kathe Spracklen hated it immediately and refused to do any more work for a Company named the Devil. :P

Also I wouldn't dream of rewriting history. Just putting some perspectives to it based on a list of factual serial numbers that showed a healthy production through 1988 and drastically declined in the subsequent years that have left me wondering what happened. This had also made me go back and re-read snippets from a person who was really there at the time trying to make a living for his family:
ChessChallenger wrote:I was finishing The Kishon Chesster project, and Helmut Weigel had asked for his own development unit for testing in Munich.
Dr Prommer approved the request and told me to deliver it to Munich so I could also meet the H & G team.

I did, and it was a very enjoyable visit. During my visit, I was asked to sit in on a Product Development meeting.
It was somewhat interesting and then Dr Buckhart (I think that was his name) head of Research & Development, said they wanted to develop an ARM processor chess product.
He wanted permission to hire an outside firm to design it. I held up my hand and said I would design it. He asked if I had ever designed anything with an ARM processor and I said no.
Dr Prommer turned to me and asked me if I could do it, and I said yes. So I got my first H & G project.

Then I went back home and started researching what the hell an ARM processor was. I called the chip sales rep who gave me an ARM development board on permanent loan.
I designed the hardware (after reading an awful lot) wrote the I/O code (LCD & Sensory board and beeper) with Ram Rom test code.
It was designed for a Fidelity Designer LCD housing, and I sent the working unit and source code to Munich but never learned what they did with it.

That success led Dr Prommer to ask me to design a high speed 68020 module for their modular system.
He wanted me to work with Richard Lang to get Richards program on it. I contacted Richard to discuss my Fast Code Slow Code hardware design. He had no problem with it.
I told him the test unit I had for him was layed out for two 68020’s. Did he want me to deliver a fully populated PCB so he could play with multi-processing.
He had no interest, so I just populated one half of the large PCB development unit that worked with their autosensory hardware.

I then also finished the layout of the production PCB for the module using my type of hardware design, I sent it to Munich to sample and build and await Richards “partitioned” software.

When my wife passed away in 1992, I went to Europe to visit friends and to visit H & G in Munich.
One of their good technicians, whom I had met on my previous visit, came up to me and said my fast speed module design was the most solid design he had seen. He said they had very few returns of modules using that design.

So that is the end of all the things I wanted to relate.
It looks like Mephisto were interested in Ron Nelsons work for their own Mephisto reasons ie fix modular problems etc. Ron's comments also indicate little interest in Fidelity itself. Looks like Ron was doing all he could to help Mephisto when asked. Ron is a technical problem solver and by all indications he was more than willing to help Mephisto at any time they wanted his services. Which looks to me they did not want too often. Well it certainly reads that they never gave him much credit for anything he tried to do for them.
ChessChallenger wrote:I have seen a few questioning postings on Chesster, which I will address.

But first I wanted to talk about the start of Talking Chess Computers.

In early 1979, in one of my Design Electronics magazines, I read about a Talking Calculator for the blind. The article explained how Dr. Forrest Mozer had invented a voice compression algorithm and had the algorithm designed into a dedicated chip. I told Sid Samole and he contacted Dr. Mozer and arranged a meeting with him at UC Berkley in California. We had a wonderful meeting, and worked out a deal with him and TeleSensory Systems to buy the voice chip. The voice data was in an external ROM and I worked on making the chess voice vocabulary, sent it to Dr. Mozer, who used his equipment to create the ROM data and sent it to me for testing and masking. I also eventually did the same in French, Spanish & German.

Texas Instruments was working and introducing their own talking product, Speak & Spell, at about this same time. Dr. Mozer’s compression was done in the Time Domain and Texas Instruments was done in the Frequency Domain.
This explained why TI’s was a little more human sounding compared to Dr Mozer’s Cylon Robotic voice.

If you are interested in a detailed reading on the Talking Calculator here is a link:
http://www.vintagecalculators.com/html/ ... eech-.html

Fast forward to 1989, Kathy wanted to develop something along the educational lines for computer chess. So she started creating a script of what could be said during a game of chess.
I received her script and we had a marketing meeting, where I presented the idea. It was liked but they wanted more personality with perhaps a wisecracker persona. Names were thrown out and Chesster was a favorite.
All during the discussion, Teri Everett (the first Chess Challenger sales person hired after the CES in 1976), who is a doodler, showed the impish figure she had doodled on her note pad. It was the graphic we used for Chesster.
(off topic, Teri was very capable and was Sid Samole’s protégé. When H & G bought Fidelity, she was passed over to run the company (perhaps because she was a woman) a big mistake in my opinion.)

For the voice system, I again went back to Dr. Mozer. He had started a company call Sensory, Inc, which was now run by his son Todd. But instead of a chip, they now offered a 65c02 software solution.
That was an ideal solution for me, so all was in place but….H & G bought Fidelity. Kathy told me she would not work for a company who called their product The Devil (Mephisto)…
and Saitek made Kathy & Dan an offer to work on a Spark CPU to compete in the World Micro Chess Computer Tournament and win back their title. So no Kathy to do the programming.

So Sid asked me if I could do it. Of course I said yes, and it was my first project in to my 12 month contract. It was not easy, as I had mentioned the Spracklen 6502 code had very few comments, so it was not easy designing a voice system that melded into a chess engine.
I came up with a clever software scheme where the voice events were coded in line with the code, and not arranged in tables. The scheme was designed for 4 languages.
I finished the English and I believe it went into production.
Then I started the French & Spanish, but H & G wanted Kishon to do the German translation and actual recording. While still in development, Helmut Wiegel, from H & G, came over to the USA to start testing the German portion.
I had designed an Apple development system to display all voice as text. So he spent a number of days with me testing and modifying the German voice design.

Helmut liked the development system and wanted to continue testing back in Germany. So I was commissioned to build a second unit and bring it to Munich.
I did and my trip to Germany led me to two projects for H & G, which I want to write about in a separate post.
Helmut Wiegel was the product developer for Tiny Chess, Fidelity imported from H & G. Helmut and I talked about that product, since I was impressed by it. He told me he hired a software company (of two I think) in Belgium to write the software for the single chip.

One of my last projects at Fidelity/H&G was Little Chesster. The goal was to cost reduce Chesster.
The LCD was eliminated, a single chip MCU with external Rom & Ram was used. A three chip solution which allowed a single sided PCB for further cost savings.
The engine & voice code of Chesster was preserved but some of the voice data was removed since it wasn’t used.

Fast forward to 1996, where I am working for Excalibur Electronics. I had finished my H8 chess engine and used it on my Mirage moving chess piece robot design. But we wanted a talking product too.

So I worked on my own compression algorithm. I had done my Master’s Thesis in grad school on a computer voice recognition technique, so I enjoyed getting back into computer voice “research”. So now I had full control, from the studio recording, to the compression and decompression of the voice by computer.

The first product I used my system on was Ivan The Terrible. I also added sound effects to the product, giving it yet another dimension of entertainment. This was done using the H8.

When I switched over to the Sunplus/GeneralPlus 65c02 single chip BLOBs, the chips were even more efficient since they had some voice hardware built into the chip.

The Alexandra The Great product was one of my interesting Talking Chess Computers. Alexandra an up and coming young woman Chess Master, had a manager who called us to see if we could work together, thus promoting Alexandra to the world.
We did, and she went into a local sound studio with me and did all the recordings. The recordings were In English, and also in Russian. They were Russian and the manager had an import company in Russia, so he wanted a Russian version to import into Russia. As I recall we did ship into Russia but not large numbers, since payment in Rubles was problematic.

What was cool, was that I didn’t use any human voices or studio for the French & Spanish (can’t remember if I ever did German).
I used the latest Text To Speech (TTS) systems that were starting to appear online. I eventually used the English TTS voice later, to eliminate Alexandra’s voice when our relationship ended.
It also looks like Mephisto cleaned house and let a lot of good people go immediately upon acquisition.

Notice the:
So Sid asked me if I could do it. Of course I said yes, and it was my first project in to my 12 month contract. It was not easy, as I had mentioned the Spracklen 6502 code had very few comments, so it was not easy designing a voice system that melded into a chess engine.
Well it reads like Sid was still interested in trying to build some new chess computers during his short stay under Mephisto. It also reads of limited interest by Mephisto as they had other ideas for their Brand. Why would the person who was the primary person that designed 80+ amazing computers in 10 years get only a 12 month contract from Mephisto? Who did they think would continue to develop the Brand of Fidelity for them? Certainly not Ron Nelson a temporary contractor!
ChessChallenger wrote:There have been many lengthy periods of good times and many euphoric moments of success, during my long career in the Consumer Electronics and Computer Chess field.

But all has not been rosy on my consumer computer chess timeline.

The Samole company bankruptcies were devastating. When Fidelity Electronics, Ltd. went bankrupt,I had personally loaned the company $350K to forestall the inevitable.
Then came Fidelity Computer Products, Inc., which went under, then came Fidelity International, Inc.
This company was saved by the Par Excellence because of its certified high rating,
but more importantly I had redesigned the electronics cutting the cost in half, yet we charged more for the product.
High margins keep companies in business.

Fidelity International, Inc. was successful but eventually Sid Samole wanted to cash out, at about the same time we lost the World Micro Tournament in Spain.
But he had a problem. I had a contract for royalties for all computer chess games.
What I didn’t know, was H & G would not buy Fidelity because of it. So one morning Sid Samole called me into his office and fired me.
I was in shock for days, so much so I did not consult a lawyer.
And at the severance meeting with Sid and his lawyer brother Myron, I signed away my rights,
in exchange for being hired as a consultant with 12 months of guaranteed projects.

Just before Sid started the selling of Fidelity International, my wife was diagnosed with terminal colon cancer.
At the severance meeting Sid even said this arrangement would give me more time with my dying wife.
Coincidently, when the 12 month guaranteed project period ended, my wife passed away and I and my four young children had a different life to adjust to.

I found work at a startup consumer music keyboard company, which was ideal for my Jack of All, Master of None credentials.
But this experience rekindled my love of music, which brought me to dancing and the eventual software programming of music analysis and beat detection.
Which I do now as a hobby.
So not only does Sid Samole shaft Ron, Mephisto knowingly shafts him too. After all what does the above say and the ethics surrounding Sid and Mephisto? "Hey Sid, unless you can remove all Ron Nelson income making rights from Fidelity, we won't buy your company!" Wonderful ethics don't you agree? Let that be written into the history books!

So Ron gets shafted by Sid and Mephisto who as a kind gesture give him a 12 month contractor engagement.

So let me ask you, who would design, develop and build future Fidelity computers after key staff were let go immediately upon acquisition and the one person who cared and prolifically built ALL the Fidelity chess computers in the past from the beginning to the end, receives a token gesture of a 12 months contract as a favor for the $350K that was shafted from him as well as any royalty rights, as a result of Mephisto's Fidelity purchase.

As I stated in the earlier post, history gets written by the victor and rarely has anything to do with reality.

The above quotes are real quotes from someone who was there, who lived it and who suffered through it.

The serial numbers are also real historical "quotes" of what was built and when.

Best regards
Nick
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Post by Berger »

spacious_mind wrote:The above quotes are real quotes from someone who was there, who lived it and who suffered through it.
Hi Mike,

Where can I read the whole article (post)?

Regards,
Berger
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Post by Mike Watters »

Berger wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:The above quotes are real quotes from someone who was there, who lived it and who suffered through it.
Hi Mike,

Where can I read the whole article (post)?

Regards,
Berger
Hi Berger

Ron Nelson posted on various threads under the name ChessChallenger over the period December 2015 to April 2016. One way to access all of them is to go to Memberlist -> Total Posts + Descending -> bottom 3rd Page, 50 posts. Getting to the most interesting posts is a bit hit and miss. There's quite a lot of stuff there about Fidelity, Excalibur, and anecdotes about various chess computer models. He came here mainly to put the record straight on his later achievements with Excalibur.

All the best
Mike
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Post by Berger »

Hi Nick,

I thought it was an article, but thank you very much for the directions: I will definitely read that posts, because I've found the quotes very interesting, and I did not read them at the time of their publication.

Regards,
Berger
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Post by Steve B »

Berger wrote:
spacious_mind wrote:The above quotes are real quotes from someone who was there, who lived it and who suffered through it.
Hi Mike,

Where can I read the whole article (post)?

Regards,
Berger
Berger wrote:Hi Nick,

I thought it was an article, but thank you very much for the directions: I will definitely read that posts, because I've found the quotes very interesting, and I did not read them at the time of their publication.

Regards,
Berger
you are 0-2 Berger
you just replied to Nick by calling him Mike
and to Mike by calling him Nick

Whats In A Name Regards
Steve
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Post by Mike Watters »

Hi Nick

How you come to most of your conclusions based on Ron Nelson's mainly neutral comments I have no idea. To me the only thing that clearly comes out of those comments, and some of Ron's other anecdotes, is that Samole is ruthless and uses him as and when it suits. I do not see any criticism of Mephisto in Ron's posts, and he does not usually hold back when things are somebody elses fault. Indeed he seems to have enjoyed working with Mephisto. You could make a more convincing argument for saying Samole was in charge and it was mainly his fault things went wrong, but I am not really interested in continuing this debate. The limited available facts are what they are. By all means have the last word.

All the best
Mike
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Post by yoyo_chessboard »

i have a question regarding the speaking technology in Chesster Challenger and Kishon chesster.

I have two Chesster Challenger (english speaking) who have two different release of the program (1.3 and a non numbered but prior with only one difference, so say 1.2).

in chesster's challenger (english) ROM dump (two versions) i find the following copyright :

Electronic Speech Systems, Inc.Patent #4214125 et al.Forrest MozerBrian C. McCulloughJonelle M. AdkissonGabriela CraneRobert InnesDavid BauerAlan R. YeeRoi N. Peers 09 May 1990

in Kishon Chesster (german) there is not anything.

in a previous today' message (12:35 am)Nick reported something said by Ron Nelson, about Chesster and Kishon.

i am not sure to well understand all what was said by Ron and reported by Nick:
does this means that Fidelity used a technology for the speaking part in Chesster (english) and another technology in Kishon Chesster (german) ?
i think it is not that that is said , but in that case why didn't fidelity kept the copyright as in chesster challenger ?
there is plenty empty room, so it isn't a problem of space.

do you have some infos or ideas about that ?
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Post by Berger »

Steve B wrote: you are 0-2 Berger
you just replied to Nick by calling him Mike
and to Mike by calling him Nick

Whats In A Name Regards
Steve
OMG! xD

I'm so sorry. It's just that I'm colorblind... Or maybe I was dyslexic?

Anyway... If my credibility in this chess forum continues to decline, I can always return to Tic-tac-toe. :roll:

Regards,
Berger
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Post by Steve B »

Berger wrote:
Steve B wrote: you are 0-2 Berger
you just replied to Nick by calling him Mike
and to Mike by calling him Nick

Whats In A Name Regards
Steve
OMG! xD

I'm so sorry. It's just that I'm colorblind... Or maybe I was dyslexic?

Anyway... If my credibility in this chess forum continues to decline, I can always return to Tic-tac-toe. :roll:

Regards,
Berger
Your credibility is now and will continue to be ...

Exemplary Regards
Steve
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Post by spacious_mind »

Mike Watters wrote:Hi Nick

How you come to most of your conclusions based on Ron Nelson's mainly neutral comments I have no idea. To me the only thing that clearly comes out of those comments, and some of Ron's other anecdotes, is that Samole is ruthless and uses him as and when it suits. I do not see any criticism of Mephisto in Ron's posts, and he does not usually hold back when things are somebody elses fault. Indeed he seems to have enjoyed working with Mephisto. You could make a more convincing argument for saying Samole was in charge and it was mainly his fault things went wrong, but I am not really interested in continuing this debate. The limited available facts are what they are. By all means have the last word.

All the best
Mike
Hi Mike,

Sorry you feel like that. It's a discussion that's all and I don't see offence in disagreeing.

The discussion that I raised here is around who really ran down Fidelity. That Sid was a shark is indisputable for sure.

Ron is tactful for sure but at the same time no one asked him to provide these additional insights and they are not so neutral at all, so therefore why should they not be looked at more closely or be ignored?

1) Teri Everett? 1st sales person? Sid's protégé somewhere at the top of the organization, who expects that she should to lead Fidelity? Probably if researched she was likely head of Sales and Marketing? Gets released upon acquisition? Ron says "very capable and a big mistake"? So if she were head of Sales and Marketing what overnight immediate damage was done by letting her go. Who would replace her? Sid who wants out?

2) Ron gets hired under a 12 month contract as favor to who? Mephisto engages him to work on voice and to bring it to Germany. They then use it to develop Kishon but hey according to what Yoyo just posted about, all copyright is missing. Starting to see a royalty avoidance trend. :)

3) So Sid finds out from Mephisto that they won't buy as Ron's royalties are all over every computer, so he fixes it. But Mephisto is unaware of all this right?

4) Ron clearly states that Sid wants to cash out. But Mephisto is blissfully unaware of this and keeps him as head of the operation but without a head of Sales and Marketing? That makes sense.

5) Mephisto knows Ron Nelson developed all the Fidelity computers yet their contact with him is voice and Mephisto module problems? That's a joke! That makes sense so who is going to spend time develop Fidelity products for Fidelity to sell?

6) Ron leaves after 1 year and Sid leaves after 1 year and amazingly it's all Sid's fault for Mephisto's failure to produce Fidelity chess computers.

So last word or not (don't know how many times I have heard that saying) let me understand what has Ron not said voluntarily?

For the sake of repeating myself, my belief is that Mephisto never wanted Fidelity to succeed, they just wanted to remove some competition in their market.

For sure Sid is no Angel, but I doubt that he was the cause of Fidelity's failure under Mephisto.

Best regards
Nick
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Post by spacious_mind »

Teri Everett = Vice President of Marketing
Samole = 3 Year Contract so he was released early

Good Marketing promotion for Phantom and Chesster.

Mephisto promoted as cash cow giant with deep pockets :)

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1990-0 ... econd-game

Best regards
Nick
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Post by spacious_mind »

I found this article funny :)
Fidelity also has two non-chess games in the works. One was shipped to retailers in late March. The Red October submarine hunt game, based on the movie starring Sean Connery, lets players match wits with a submarine captain. The game retails for $89.

The second game, Time To Go Mental, is a $20 toy that flashes a number from one to six each second. The challenge is to punch a button that matches the number to keep the count alive. Time To Go Mental is a version of Knobel Klack, a West German game produced by Hegener + Glaser AG of Munich, which was until last September Fidelity`s prime competitor in Europe.

Samole, who joined Fidelity in 1969 and became president in 1970, sold the company in September to Hegener + Glaser for an undisclosed sum he described only as ``plenty.``

The sum gave him enough wealth to retire, Samole said, although he is under contract to run Fidelity for three years.

As a public company, Hegener + Glaser can develop products that Fidelity shied away from because they were risky. Time To Go Mental is one example, Samole said.
USA has a population of 300,000,000 people and what does H&G give Fidelity to sell? A dice game for $20 :P

Schroeder, Morsch, Lang to put in Excellence housing would have been nice for starters. Few people in the US knew about Mephisto so it would have been really easy to ship over some ROM's and have Ron minimally re-design some Fidelity housing's and have Teri market them and ship them off to Toys R US, Sharper Image and RadioShack and quickly sell a few thousand computers in places where no one has seen Mephisto before.

Instead what does Fidelity get? A dice game that no one in the USA has heard of :P

Brilliant.... regards
Nick
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Post by yoyo_chessboard »

hi all and particulary Nick and Mike

Nick:
i think we are all OK for the period starting in 1977 till end of 1989.
what i called period_1 to period_4 in my listing.
there are some improvments for 1978/1979 but we have correclty pined the boards.

after that, for 1990, 1991 i named two periods:
period_5 with serial number of 8 digits that seems to follow the previous algo :YDDDSSSS
and period_6 with 8 digits apparently (re)starting from 0.

if i well undestood you, you think period_6 is previous_5.

myself i think the contrary : period_5 is prior to period_6.

if i follow your article written in april 1990, i read that:

The result is Chesster Challenger, a computer with a sarcastic streak and a 500-word vocabulary that hones in on mistakes in an opponent`s game.
The game`s suggested retail price -- Fidelity`s retailers include Burdines, Sears and Toys ``R`` Us -- will be $199 when Chesster appears on store shelves, probably in July.


the game will be aviable in july 1990.
in our common listing we have a chesster in week_90_35, two in week_90_38 , two in week_90_39,... (so august 1990)
chesster and kishon extract :
http://www7.zippyshare.com/v/ITdnOFrU/file.html

so i really think that period_5 is prior period_6.

and that article seems to lead to the same direction.

kishon chesster appeared later, probably in last days of 1990.

i think also that mike's timeline is in the right order, and needs only some improvments on the really month of birth of a model, but not a total upside-down.

saying that it remains the problem i identified earlier.
the last numbering day of 1989 is 321 (novembre 1989)
the first serial we have from 1990 is from day 243 (31 august 1990)
even if we find a serial from december 1989, what did Fidelity do during that long period ? (between december 1989 to august 1990)
did they stop their production and moved it to Asia ? or anything else.


regards
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