Antique chess programs

[Carey]

Hello:

Nice project! I wish you good luck.

I guess you are aware of the public availability of HIARCS source code from 1981:

1981: Source Code

The same with a version from 1983:

1983: Source Code

Both programmes can be downloaded as ZIP files:

Free Chess Software

Thank you very much to HIARCS team for make it possible.

Regards from Spain.

Ajedrecista.

I don't know if I was at the time or not. (It was 2006 or so when I started the project. It's languished for a few years....)

At the time I was primarily concerned with stuff from the 60's and 70s. The really old, pioneering stuff. By the time I started writing my first chess program (in interpreted BASIC in 82) chess programming was already 'old' stuff.

Your post is an excellent example of why a project like mine needs to be resurrected and done in a communal fashion. So that anybody with knowledge or source (or even just binaries) can assist in the preservation.

There was so much pioneering work done that has been lost. CoKo, Tech, MacHack VI, McCarthy program, the Daly CP, etc.

[stegemma]

[...]
Too bad the G6 group didn't exist back in the 60's and 70's because in some cases, binaries of dead computers are all we have!

And in many cases, we don't even have that. Lots of authors told me they no longer had the source, partial source or even binaries anymore.

I've born in '65 and I haven't had anything somehow programmable until '79... so it would be very hard to build the G6 group

The fact that programmers can lose their own sources is a good reason to have some site to hold a copy.

[Gerd Isenberg]

Hi Carey,

cpw would be proud to host some of your stuff if it doesn't exceed say 400 MB (We have 744.0 MB currently available of 2 GB).

Best Regards,
Gerd

Gerd, I checked into the CPW site a few years ago when I realized I was having trouble getting the energy to work on my project and that all my interest in hobbies was shutting off.

Switching to a full wiki kind of thing would have been a major boost to the project.

But at the time your hosting site didn't have the right copyright / permissions. They weren't compatible with the stuff I had, which was basically "the author still owns it but allows me to distribute it"

From what I had read and understood at the time, your wiki hosting site tried to put its own license and restrictions etc onto stuff. That may have changed since then, I don't know.

OK, contributions to cpw are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 License. Descpite I am the primary contributer, it is not my wiki - I am organizer with some privileges, owner if any is cpw founder Mark Lefler. Antique chess program sources are still copyrighted by their authors of course, even if the sources become open source. You can choose to become member and upload files up to 20 MB. Otherwise it is fine to link to external places, but except wikipedia this requires a lot of work to update dead links over the years

[Carey]

Well, it looks like the archive that I thought was the final version of my antique / classic chess program website wasn't actually the last one. Oh well.

It doesn't have Awit or Blitz & CrayBlitz source. Those can be added by others though. (I notice that Mr. Marsland has released more of his chess program work. That needs to be added.)

Here is a drop box link for what I have found so far.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108 ... essWiki.7z

(I'll leave this up for a week or so.)

Read the ReadMe.txt for some more info.

I will gather up the OCR'ed source to two versions of CrayBlitz and Blitz and post a link to those too. I have no plans to try and post the scan images of CrayBlitz & Blitz though. 8gig or so is just too much for me to find some place to upload.

Somebody else needs to take the time and do Mr Marslands stuff again.

This really does need to be a community effort.... I hope y'all can come up with some reasonable way to archive this stuff as well as continue to gather.


I still feel like there was more what I'm posting. Stuff that wasn't ready to release or stuff that the author shared but didn't want me to post. (Oh expletive... I better check that for that ASAP! My memory is so bad that if I didn't make note of it, there's no way I'll remember now!)

[Gerd Isenberg]

your museum on web archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200712211158 ... /Chess.htm

[Carey]

your museum on web archive:
http://web.archive.org/web/200712211158 ... /Chess.htm

That, I think, is the one I put up on drop box.

However, I had a newer one that included Awit and BLitz & CrayBlitz source and some more notes. I didn't upload that one because .... I don't remember. Most likely I just simply didn't get around to it and it just never happened.

[Carey]

I've gathered the OCR'ed source for CrayBlitz 43g, 47a, and the CAL for 43c, as well as Blitz 69.

I'm also going to include the scans for those printouts. Thanks to the TIF image format, they are much smaller than the PNG or JPG that I had used. Didn't even remember doing TIF but I guess I was planning to post that too since OCR'ing FORTRAN is a joke.

I'll have to upload it tomorrow when I have decent net connection speed.

I think that should be all that I'm likely to find on the archive drives that I have with me.

Still missing Tony Marsland's AWIT, but that can be easily re-downloaded by anybody.

I think I once got in contact with Mr. Raymond about GENIE. He had a printed copy but no way to scan it at the time. Somebody could do a follow up.

Larry Atkin had a micro program or two and I think he was willing to distribute them if anybody could manage to get them off floppies. Somebody needs to contact him again.

Recontact Dan Spracklen about source for Sargon 2 & 3 etc.

I have Zolrand Chess, as well as Borland Chess and Borland Chess for Windows, but I never included them due to lack of permission. (That was why I didn't include a bunch of commercial micro programs from the 80s... if you aren't in the U.S. then it might not matter so much since they are all abandonware.)

Never could get hold of Dave Kittenger about MyChess.

And lots of other programs... More programs than I had ability to hunt for.

I hope somebody manages to set things up so that people can contribute to programs & authors they find. I wanted to way bak then but never could find a place to do it and then my energy ran out for all my hobbies.


I was also once trying to gather up interesting stories and happenings from the old tournaments but I didn't get far.

[Carey]

Okay, here is the dropbox link for the OCR source for Blitz and two versions of CrayBlitz.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/108711463/Blitz.7z

I'll leave the link active for a week or so.

I think those two links have all that I have handy.

I was concentrating on the oldest programs from the 60s and 70s since that's where my historical interest lay, (and the most chance of stuff being lost!) but as you can see my success was some what limited.

I couldn't find some, didn't get answers from others, and others didn't have copies anymore. Tapes no longer working, floppies no longer readable, paper tape damaged, stuff buried in piles and piles of accumulated collections of a lifetime, etc.

I never really got around to doing all the micro programs from the 80s because there was no safe legal way to distribute a copy. A lot of abandonware places manage to survive with stuff that old but I didn't want to take the legal risk.

For those that live outside the U.S., have fun archiving them!

I hope somebody manages to do something with the stuff I'm providing and the community can help save computer chess history, all the way from the 60s onward.

I should have done this years ago but I didn't get around to it. I have to wait for the urge to do some particular thing as well as the energy to do it. A lot of things just "aren't worth the effort" like they used to be.

[stegemma]

[...]I have to wait for the urge to do some particular thing as well as the energy to do it. A lot of things just "aren't worth the effort" like they used to be.

For recent personal facts, I really understand you're last sentence so I say you sincerely "good luck!".

[Gerd Isenberg]

I still feel like there was more what I'm posting. Stuff that wasn't ready to release or stuff that the author shared but didn't want me to post. (Oh expletive... I better check that for that ASAP! My memory is so bad that if I didn't make note of it, there's no way I'll remember now!)

Thank you, Carey. I particulary like the Beal draft papers/alg1986review.txt from 2006 of the recently discussed nullmove-quiescence.