Egy kis sakk-számítógép történelem 6502-re
Originally shared by mos6502
The soccer championship is over, and we return with a more intellectual type of sports - chess!
...
The first chess for the 6502 was MicroChess by Peter Jennings [1] - in fact he claims it was the first game sold for home computers. Which is probably right, as the home computer revolution was only about to start with the 6502 and the KIM-1.
When deciding on which computer to start, Peter had to choose between an 8080-based S100 system and a KIM-1. To understand both better, he wrote a simulator for each chip on an APL timesharing machine he had access to - only to be "firmly convinced that [he] would rather program a 6502 than an 8080" after that excercise... After becoming addictive with programming the 6502, he wrote a cross-assembler on said APL machine.
The story of writing micro chess can be read on Peter's own homepage and it is amazing how it developed, and how he managed to get a chess program into the KIM-1's limited amount of resources. Remember - it had only 1152 Bytes of RAM!
In his words that I could not do better: "No other activity can keep you in the moment the way that writing software can. At each step, one hundred percent of your concentration is applied to the solving of the current problem. Time disappears."
The first announcement was published in the KIM-1 User notes, Volume 1, Issue 2, November 1976, leaked to the Editor Eric Rehnke by Jim Butterfield. In December 1976 and early 1977 the first commercial announcements were published, and microchess was available for a mere $10. Suddenly bags of letters - many including cheques - appeared on the doorstep.
Microchess was later developed further into versions for the PET, the Commodore 64 and others [2,3] but the most intriguing one was the "Commodore CHESSmate" [4,5,6] - basically a KIM-1 with Microchess in ROM, and a keyboard and display to enter your moves or show the computer's moves.
Later other other chess programs were developed for the 6502, like VideoChess for the Atari 2600 [7,8,9]- a similarly limited machine, or with more graphics like Pet Chess [10], or even Battle Chess [11] for the C64 [12]. Colossus Chess was developed on an Apple II, and sold on a number of machines like the C64 or the BBC Micro [13]
Peter Jennings has later moved on and used the royalties gained through microchess to found VisiCorp and and bring us such software as VisiCalc.
So what was your favourite chess program on the 6502 machines?
[1] http://www.benlo.com/microchess/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchess
[3] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/MicroChess
[4] https://plus.google.com/u/0/+XadNightfall/posts/jpRzh6YDq6A
[5] Commodore Chessmate
[6] http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/chess.html
[7] http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=580
[8] Video Chess for the Atari 2600
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Chess
[10] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/PetChess
[11] C64 - Battle Chess
[12] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Commodore+64
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_Chess
http://www.benlo.com/microchess
Originally shared by mos6502
The soccer championship is over, and we return with a more intellectual type of sports - chess!
...
The first chess for the 6502 was MicroChess by Peter Jennings [1] - in fact he claims it was the first game sold for home computers. Which is probably right, as the home computer revolution was only about to start with the 6502 and the KIM-1.
When deciding on which computer to start, Peter had to choose between an 8080-based S100 system and a KIM-1. To understand both better, he wrote a simulator for each chip on an APL timesharing machine he had access to - only to be "firmly convinced that [he] would rather program a 6502 than an 8080" after that excercise... After becoming addictive with programming the 6502, he wrote a cross-assembler on said APL machine.
The story of writing micro chess can be read on Peter's own homepage and it is amazing how it developed, and how he managed to get a chess program into the KIM-1's limited amount of resources. Remember - it had only 1152 Bytes of RAM!
In his words that I could not do better: "No other activity can keep you in the moment the way that writing software can. At each step, one hundred percent of your concentration is applied to the solving of the current problem. Time disappears."
The first announcement was published in the KIM-1 User notes, Volume 1, Issue 2, November 1976, leaked to the Editor Eric Rehnke by Jim Butterfield. In December 1976 and early 1977 the first commercial announcements were published, and microchess was available for a mere $10. Suddenly bags of letters - many including cheques - appeared on the doorstep.
Microchess was later developed further into versions for the PET, the Commodore 64 and others [2,3] but the most intriguing one was the "Commodore CHESSmate" [4,5,6] - basically a KIM-1 with Microchess in ROM, and a keyboard and display to enter your moves or show the computer's moves.
Later other other chess programs were developed for the 6502, like VideoChess for the Atari 2600 [7,8,9]- a similarly limited machine, or with more graphics like Pet Chess [10], or even Battle Chess [11] for the C64 [12]. Colossus Chess was developed on an Apple II, and sold on a number of machines like the C64 or the BBC Micro [13]
Peter Jennings has later moved on and used the royalties gained through microchess to found VisiCorp and and bring us such software as VisiCalc.
So what was your favourite chess program on the 6502 machines?
[1] http://www.benlo.com/microchess/
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchess
[3] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/MicroChess
[4] https://plus.google.com/u/0/+XadNightfall/posts/jpRzh6YDq6A
[5] Commodore Chessmate
[6] http://www.floodgap.com/retrobits/ckb/secret/chess.html
[7] http://www.atariage.com/manual_html_page.html?SoftwareLabelID=580
[8] Video Chess for the Atari 2600
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Chess
[10] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/PetChess
[11] C64 - Battle Chess
[12] https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Commodore+64
[13] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colossus_Chess
http://www.benlo.com/microchess
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