[HN Gopher] Microchess for the Kim-1 (2006)
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Microchess for the Kim-1 (2006)
Author : jonbaer
Score : 69 points
Date : 2024-04-02 04:19 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.benlo.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.benlo.com)
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| "It was necessary to enter the program into the Kim from this hex
| dump using the Kim's hexadecimal keypad. If any mistakes were
| made, the program would probably not work."
|
| I remember tying in hex during the 80s. What a relief when they
| started to add checksums and you knew you've made a typo in that
| hex data line.
| djmips wrote:
| My brother helped proof read for me. It was super useful.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| My sister was reading and I was typing :-)
| billforsternz wrote:
| Ha ha, I feature towards the bottom of this article, for an early
| (for me) venture into retro chess software. I really should
| revisit it (must be getting up towards 20 years) and see how
| badly or nots the bits have rotted.
| varjag wrote:
| It's incredible that Amazon affiliate links from 2006 still work.
| People built things to last back in the day!
| tromp wrote:
| The Wikipedia page for Microchess [1] (which the page for the
| better known Sinclair ZX81 1K Chess [2] links to; would be fun to
| see a game between these two), contains more interesting tidbits:
|
| > Microchess was sold for $10 per copy, in either US or Canadian
| currency; $12 for a copy that included a paper tape; and $13 for
| a copy on cassette tape.[9]
|
| > Chuck Peddle, president of MOS Technology, offered to buy the
| rights to the game for $1,000, but Jennings refused to sell,
| believing his mail-order sales would make more.
|
| > Over 1,000 copies of the game were sold by mid-1977, leading
| Jennings to quit his job and run Micro-Ware full-time. The game's
| success grew as Jennings released it for more microcomputer
| systems and the overall microcomputer market expanded. The game
| made Micro-Ware over $1 million by 1978, and was claimed in 1981
| by Personal Software to have been the first computer program of
| any kind to do so.
|
| > Microchess led to the creation of Micro-Ware, possibly the
| first software publishing company. In 1978, Micro-Ware merged
| with software publisher Personal Software, operated by Dan
| Fylstra, who had seen the game at the November 1976 show and
| bought the third-ever sold copy, with Fylstra and Jennings as co-
| owners. The resulting company, still named Personal Software,
| paid royalties to Jennings for Microchess, but Jennings soon
| funneled that money into funding the development of VisiCalc
| (1979), the first spreadsheet software. This led the company to
| rebrand as VisiCorp in 1982.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microchess
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1K_ZX_Chess
| squokko wrote:
| Crazy in this age to look at that hex dump and realize that it is
| a chess playing program. One way of thinking about it: the first
| image on the web page is 27 times the size of the program.
| bluedino wrote:
| As computers became more capable, it must have been a fine line
| between making a better 'game' and making a more powerful chess
| engine.
| JoeDaDude wrote:
| "....[6502 and 8080] simulators were written in APL".
|
| Now THAT would be software to behold. No mention by the author as
| to whether the code of these emulators still exist.
| wiz21c wrote:
| > Xerox Sigma IX Time Sharing computer
|
| The thing appears to have 128KB RAM and it can do time sharing...
| Impressive!
| retrac wrote:
| The SDS Sigma 7 was one of the first computers sold
| commercially with the hardware to support memory virtualization
| and user/supervisor modes. It got some early time-sharing use.
| SDS later got bought by Xerox, and carried the business forward
| into the 1980s, where they eventually got squeezed out, IIRC.
|
| They were a big player for a while, but mostly for pragmatic
| factory installations, online calculator services, library
| catalog lookup, stuff like that, not the associated
| programmer/hacker culture, so the machines are now mostly
| forgotten.
|
| The LCM apparently had one?
| https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:LCM_-_Xerox_Sigma_9_...
| pinewurst wrote:
| Yes and they used to offer online access to it as well.
| flyinghamster wrote:
| Back in those days, that was quite a lot of memory. An entire
| megabyte was an amazing luxury. My high school's PDP-11/34 was
| maxed out with 128Kwords (256 KB), and it was configured for at
| least 12 (maybe 16) users, with up to 56 KB user memory + 8 KB
| of run-time system per user and swapping handling the overload.
| But, back then, memory was an expensive luxury - that KIM-1 had
| all of 1K, so you had to make every byte count.
| hvs wrote:
| If you are interested in the source (and can read 6502
| assembler):
|
| http://www.6502.org/source/games/uchess/uchess.htm
| yayitswei wrote:
| > The program and data required all of the Kim-1's memory ... 1K.
| How things have changed in the past quarter century.
|
| What hasn't changed is software taking up all the available
| memory!
| asdefghyk wrote:
| Does anyone know the model of the cassette recorder in the
| article photo?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Did some googling, looks like a: Marantz Superscope C-105?
| dboreham wrote:
| Oh wow, a second person who connected a Baudot teleprinter to a
| KIM-1!
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(page generated 2024-04-02 23:01 UTC)