in Jaap van Oosterwijk Bruyn's report on the Dutch Computer-Chess Championship 1985, ICCA Journal, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 248 ff, you are mentioned as co-author (along with Frans Morsch) of Nona!?
The exception was provided by Frans Morsch and Ed Schroeder, who saw their winning brainchild, 'Nona', commercialized under the Mephisto trademark label and so were able to devote all of their time to their pet.
Is that right? How does it happen? In 1986 you played again with Rebel versus Nona, authored by Frans alone.
Frans ported his engine (Nona) to my interface code for the Mephisto hardware because my hardware was running at a higher speed and at the time his program was considered stronger. The idea was also to commercialize it but as far as I can remember that never happened.
Frans ported his engine (Nona) to my interface code for the Mephisto hardware because my hardware was running at a higher speed and at the time his program was considered stronger. The idea was also to commercialize it but as far as I can remember that never happened.
Hi Ed,
I see, interesting. So you were not aware about Nona details? Do you mean commercialize that never happened for 6502 home computers? Since it was actually commercialized by H&G!? According to the Schachcomputer.info - wiki, the Mephisto Mondial released in 1985 was based on Nona, Mephisto Rebell 5.0 was released later in 1986. Here some links, even with a 2002 quote from you ...
Frans Morsch in those days did an even better job, 2 Mhz 6502, 16 Kb ROM, 512 bytes RAM (the Mephisto Mondial) and it was very close in strength to my stuff wheras my stuff ran on 5 Mhz, and 4 Kb RAM (Mephisto Rebell 5.0). Don't ask me how Frans did it, but he did.
In those days there wasn't any C compiler so you were forced to write in assembler. Writing assembler it was not the chess engine that gave me a headache (I was used to that delicate needle work) but writing the interface was a major pain for me each time. You have to realize you had write directly into the hardware, make those LED's burn, program the buzzer, write to the screen (you had to program the characters yourself), program the keys all driven my some tricky interrupt routine. Bah, I never liked it.
Later the hardware was upgraded to 32 Kb ROM and 8 Kb RAM, it gave some extra ELO but not all that exciting. At a certain moment you realize the hardware limitation is a dead-end street, time to say goodbye to the 6502 and move on to the RISC processor (the ChessMachine) and a few years later to the PC.
Frans ported his engine (Nona) to my interface code for the Mephisto hardware because my hardware was running at a higher speed and at the time his program was considered stronger. The idea was also to commercialize it but as far as I can remember that never happened.
Hi Ed,
I see, interesting. So you were not aware about Nona details? Do you mean commercialize that never happened for 6502 home computers? Since it was actually commercialized by H&G!? According to the Schachcomputer.info - wiki, the Mephisto Mondial released in 1985 was based on Nona, Mephisto Rebell 5.0 was released later in 1986. Here some links, even with a 2002 quote from you ...
Frans Morsch in those days did an even better job, 2 Mhz 6502, 16 Kb ROM, 512 bytes RAM (the Mephisto Mondial) and it was very close in strength to my stuff wheras my stuff ran on 5 Mhz, and 4 Kb RAM (Mephisto Rebell 5.0). Don't ask me how Frans did it, but he did.
In those days there wasn't any C compiler so you were forced to write in assembler. Writing assembler it was not the chess engine that gave me a headache (I was used to that delicate needle work) but writing the interface was a major pain for me each time. You have to realize you had write directly into the hardware, make those LED's burn, program the buzzer, write to the screen (you had to program the characters yourself), program the keys all driven my some tricky interrupt routine. Bah, I never liked it.
Later the hardware was upgraded to 32 Kb ROM and 8 Kb RAM, it gave some extra ELO but not all that exciting. At a certain moment you realize the hardware limitation is a dead-end street, time to say goodbye to the 6502 and move on to the RISC processor (the ChessMachine) and a few years later to the PC.
Gerd
Hi Gerd,
The odd combination (my MMIV hardware and interface code + Nona engine) was planned (promised) to be commercialized but later cancelled for reasons I forgot. Likely because Mr. Hegener wanted to stick to his magic commercial formula, Frans low-end, me middle class, Richard high end.
