Emulator for the Tasc Final ChessCard

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fhub
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Emulator for the Tasc Final ChessCard

Post by fhub »

Hi,

in the last days the MAME developer 'hap' has implemented the drivers for the Tasc Final Chesscard (many thanks to him for this great work!),
and so I've created a new ready-to-use package Tasc-FCC - this emulates the Final ChessCard for PC and C64!

You can find the download link (together with CB-Emu and MessChess) on my homepage:
https://fhub.jimdo.com/

Regards,
Franz
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Bryan Whitby
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Post by Bryan Whitby »

Thanks Franz 👍
fdimeglio
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Post by fdimeglio »

@Franz sounds very interesting. Thank you !

Emulated Regards,

Fabrice
Looking for a nice Fidelity EAG or A/S and a Odin Encore. Please send me a private message.
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Fernando
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Post by Fernando »

fdimeglio wrote:@Franz sounds very interesting. Thank you !

Emulated Regards,

Fabrice
I do not know why, once I activate emu.exe. I get a dialog with some amorphous zones, no text, nothing, squares in color and nothing more
Festina Lente
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BenRedic
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Re: Emulator for the Tasc Final ChessCard

Post by BenRedic »

fhub wrote:in the last days the MAME developer 'hap' has implemented the drivers for the Tasc Final Chesscard (many thanks to him for this great work!),
and so I've created a new ready-to-use package Tasc-FCC - this emulates the Final ChessCard for PC and C64!
You, Sir, are a scholar and a gentleman! Thank you for making this available.
Thank you for an interesting game.
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mclane
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Post by mclane »

The gui of the chess machines was always a pleasure to use.
Nearly perfect to use.
Astonishing how much ahead it was at its time.
We don’t know much about the 8 but Software. We know more about the later risc chess machines with Schroeder and the king.

But this is a chance. We can today invest research ...
What seems like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow.
Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow....
fhub
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Re: Emulator for the Tasc Final ChessCard

Post by fhub »

Hi,

now also the Tasc ChessMachine (ver. 2.1/2.3/3.1) with the engines Gideon 2.1 and TheKing 0.5/1.0/2.20 are implemented in my new version Tasc-Emu. :)

Many thanks to the MAME developer 'hap' for writing the hardware drivers for these Tasc chess cards!

The ready-to-use package is available from my website:
https://fhub.jimdo.com/

Regards,
Franz
Steve Maughan
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Amazing GUI

Post by Steve Maughan »

Hi Franz,

Many thanks! It's years since I played with the ChessMachine GUI, but what a pleasure it is to use. It is really well thought out.

Steve
Chessnut
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Post by Chessnut »

@Fhub,

Many thanks for the ChessMachine emulation, it brought back many happy memories of the original.

Regards,

Keith
TracySMiller
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Post by TracySMiller »

Franz, thank you so much for your emulator work. I have so much fun with the CB-Emu program (especially the MESS chess implementation), and I recently discovered your TASC Emu. I have a question about that. Whenever I try to go into the machine configuration to increase the emulation speed, whenever I try to open the program, I get DOS type errors, and the program won't start. If I try to change the emulation speed back to its initial value of 1, the errors persist.

Do you know a solution for this? If it matters, I'm running the emulation on a Windows 10 machine.
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Tibono2
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Post by Tibono2 »

Hello Tracy,

I remember facing similar issues back in time; a couple of files can get "corrupted" in either way I didn't bother to find out.

I got rid of those:

- reinstal a brand new, clean Tasc-Emu directory from Franz's package
- assuming you use the 286 host (this one puts less workload on your computer, without any impact on the Tasc card performance), create a backup copy of nvram\at286\mb_rtc file, named mb_rtc.bak; create as well a backup copy of ini\at286.ini, named at286.bak (simply, each in its origin directory)
- in Tasc-Emu root directory, create a small batch file, named as you wish, for example TascCM.bat

Code: Select all

@echo off
copy nvram\at286\mb_rtc.bak nvram\at286\mb_rtc
copy ini\at286.bak ini\at286.ini
cls
echo *** Tasc ChessMachine ARM 2 @15Mhz host PC AT 286 @8Mhz ***
Tasc-Emu at286 chessm31a
Now, instead of launching Tasc-Emu.exe, launch the .bat file.
Hope this helps,
Tibono
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Tibono2
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Post by Tibono2 »

one more tip: should you want to use emulation speed-ups (and should your host computer be able to!), now you need to edit your source at286.bak

Code: Select all

#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip             0
frameskip                 5
seconds_to_run            0
throttle                  1
sleep                     1
speed                     1.0
refreshspeed              0
set speed, and adjust frameskip accordingly...
I usually run the Tasc Chess Machine emulator at speed 1.0; but for you I tried quick tests at speed 2.0 & 4.0; I couldn't get the DOS errors you faced.
Cheers,
Tibono
TracySMiller
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Post by TracySMiller »

Thank you so much, Tibono2!
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Steve B
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Post by Steve B »

i wonder who the source is for these emulations?

I see some fairly rare computers have been emulated
the TSB IV La Regence or Scisys President for example
very few collectors own these computers..i doubt there are more then a handful of each in existence today

is there one main source for the Emu's?
is the source public knowledge?
if so..i am betting a collector with a huge collection is providing the eprom readouts

Curious Regards
Steve
TracySMiller
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Post by TracySMiller »

Tibono2 wrote:one more tip: should you want to use emulation speed-ups (and should your host computer be able to!), now you need to edit your source at286.bak

Code: Select all

#
# CORE PERFORMANCE OPTIONS
#
autoframeskip             0
frameskip                 5
seconds_to_run            0
throttle                  1
sleep                     1
speed                     1.0
refreshspeed              0
set speed, and adjust frameskip accordingly...
I usually run the Tasc Chess Machine emulator at speed 1.0; but for you I tried quick tests at speed 2.0 & 4.0; I couldn't get the DOS errors you faced.
Cheers,
Tibono
I did these things, and now the errors are gone. However, I can't seem to get the emulator speed changes to actually take effect. For example, if I sent the speed to 2.0, then open the game, and try to play a game set at 60 sec/move, it is still taking the entire 60 seconds and not the 30 seconds I would expect. Any ideas what I am doing wrong?
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