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(Assume that all of the following is IMO even though written as fact.)
The Excalibur Grandmaster is the only Excalibur board that could truly be called a flagship product. The Alexandra (I particularly like the 3-line LCD) and Igor are nice boards, but aren't particularly original. (The Excalibur Pavilion 'Electronic Talking Chess' uses the Alexandra program and the same 3-line LCD and still turns up on eBay; the same unit can be found at Toys-R-Us- but without magnets in the pieces- for $29.95.)
The GM was such an original board that one could almost say that the design was ingenious. There is no board remotely like it. It provides the look and feel of a standard tournament board, but with just enough electronics to make you feel like there's a human on the other end.
I particularly like the button dedicated to the Score, the fact that the board can be run on batteries and the overall simplicity of the design. I would have liked an Easy button (ie. turn ponder off), enough memory so that a game could be replayed back and some LEDs, though the latter likely would have increased the chance of future failures since the board itself is not exactly rigid when you pick it up.
Anyway, I have 2 GMs and there is one always on the coffee table in front of the TV for a quick pickup game.
SirDave wrote:(Assume that all of the following is IMO even though written as fact.)
The Excalibur Grandmaster is the only Excalibur board that could truly be called a flagship product. The Alexandra (I particularly like the 3-line LCD) and Igor are nice boards, but aren't particularly original. (The Excalibur Pavilion 'Electronic Talking Chess' uses the Alexandra program and the same 3-line LCD and still turns up on eBay; the same unit can be found at Toys-R-Us- but without magnets in the pieces- for $29.95.)
The GM was such an original board that one could almost say that the design was ingenious. There is no board remotely like it. It provides the look and feel of a standard tournament board, but with just enough electronics to make you feel like there's a human on the other end.
I particularly like the button dedicated to the Score, the fact that the board can be run on batteries and the overall simplicity of the design. I would have liked an Easy button (ie. turn ponder off), enough memory so that a game could be replayed back and some LEDs, though the latter likely would have increased the chance of future failures since the board itself is not exactly rigid when you pick it up.
Anyway, I have 2 GMs and there is one always on the coffee table in front of the TV for a quick pickup game.
GM Forever Regards,
Dave
The GM is unique
my only complaints are
1.cant turn of the sound
2.cant play black from bottom without turning the board around
The problem with GM in my opinion is that the chess part is not better than any other Excalibur or only very marginally. I do not know if it is a Nelson program for certain, but it could be following the line of thought I have expressed before and what Blincoe say.
Excalibur line in full is as a chess dinosaur of the 8o's running in steroids.
The GM lacks torsional rigidity. Sorry, but it is very poorly engineered from a mechanical point of view. All Excalibur products bar DTTC are incredibly cheaply built to the point where I find it truly disgusting. I've seen multiple brand new GMs come out of their boxes with the Masonite backing literally cracked where the screws go in. This lack of rigidity makes it a nightmare to service and very difficult to put back together and have it working correctly again. A sign of this issue is that the LCD display will start to "lose" segments.
My biggest issue with Excalibur products hasn't been the programs (though as I have mentioned I'm not exactly over-enthusiastic about them either) - it's been the build quality. Broken GMs upon delivery, blown reed switches, recalcitrant LCD displays and don't get me started about the internal build quality of the Alexandra. Oh, and a couple of Phantom Force machines that lasted a couple of days each (see the reviews of this machine on Amazon to see that it isn't just me).
Then there are the bugs with the Alexandra and DTTC - the "dissolving" LCD display the longer the game goes on. After the machines reach the first time control in a 2 hour game, the display slowly dissolves away, becoming more and more corrupted as the game goes on. I have observed this with about 6 of them - 3 Alexandras and 3 DTTC machines. They often lose on time as well, failing to make their 40th move before their 2 hours is up.
I let Mr. Nelson know all about these bugs by way of a very detailed snail mail letter but never received any reply.
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
I can't argue the subject of the GM build quality- it could have been a lot better. Still, so far I've had good luck with both my boards which were bought used off eBay.
I do feel that the GM is stronger than any other of its original (vs cloned) boards, except for perhaps the Igor which is said to use the same program. I have the Igor, but so far, it sits in its box unplayed.
SirDave wrote:I do feel that the GM is stronger than any other of its original (vs cloned) boards, except for perhaps the Igor which is said to use the same program. I have the Igor, but so far, it sits in its box unplayed.
Be aware that I know of at least two completely different "Igors" out there. Yes, I thought Igors were GM clones and that was that. So did my brother. Some years ago (maybe mid 2000s) he specifically ordered an Igor machine thinking it would be a clone of his GM machine. It wasn't. I can't remember the precise details but I think it had a completely different level system and did not play chess at the same level (it was significantly weaker and had more in common with the other "Nelson" chess program linage).
Chess is like painting the Mona Lisa whilst walking through a minefield.
My favorite part of the debate (via Monsieur Plastique):
As for the GM, I have great difficulty believing it is Ron's work but am happy to stand corrected. The GM is considerably stronger than all other native Excalibur machines yet the difference in hardware between even an Alexandra and the GM is not huge. Why then, would a machine marketed well before the Alexandra play a far stronger game than the Alexandra when the hardware specification differences simply cannot account for that strength difference? They are both 32K programs, they both use an H8 processor and the GM is only about 20% faster. Nowhere near enough to account for almost 200 points difference in my own testing. So to me it has to come down to authorship.
OK. The thread states (without apparent contradiction) that Excalibur GM = Igor (at least), i.e., same program. So, just to clarify the debate, two questions:
1. Are they the same?
2. Who programmed - Nelson (per Steve, whose report I believe), or someone else?
- R.
"You have, let us say, a promising politician, a rising artist that you wish to destroy. Dagger or bomb are archaic and unreliable - but teach him, inoculate him with chess."
– H.G. Wells
GM cannot be 200 points stronger than Alexandra. I have played both and are both more or less in the same league, say, 1700-1800-. I even consider Ivan stronger, to date.
What is absolutely certain is that GM was made at the cheap. I dare to say that the cost of fabrication - materiel, electronics, etc- cannot be higher than 50 bucks, in China.
Fernando wrote:The last bath of engines that Ron Nelson produced for Excalibur, all the series including Alexandra, Ivan etc, were clearly much stronger than the original harvest of Ron, say, CC3, CC10, CC7, Voice, etc, and even stronger than the first machines produce by the Spracklen for Fidelity, say, chess champion sensory, elite, etc....
Now, which could be the secret of that?
Maybe simply Ron just learned the new techniques that were developed trough the years and that are a commodity these days.
Or...
maybe he made use of the codes of the Spracklen, with or without some extra things coming from that development.
I suppose the codes the Spracklen produced were owned by Fidelity and so, after its demise, by Excalibur.
I have had this suspicions due to certain moves the last Nelson bath play that are equally to what champion played in similar positions AND that you does not find in contemporary engines. One of those old fashion moves is, when the program has nothing to do in his opinion, King from g1 to h1.......
What do you think?
Fern
?
It's simply a matter of search depth.
Old machines no pb and 2 plies or 3.
New machines 6 plies.
What seems like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow.
Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow....
)
Nice ploy to bring Fern back into the fold!