Antique chess programs

[Carey]

It's been a long long time since I've been here.

I used to do an 'antique' computer chess programs web site and collect & preserve the classic programs we grew up with (or for most of those here, were around before they were even born... If was after 1985 or so, I didn't care about the program.)

Unfortunately due to a variety of personal issues (family, long term depression, and general "I don't care about anything" feelings) the whole project kind of became abandoned.

A year or so ago Mr. Zobrist contacted me saying he had finally recovered his program. I suggested he get in touch with Mr. Hyatt about finding a place that it could be posted & shared.

I sent a similar message to the CHAOS selective search program author suggesting the same thing, but I didn't hear back.

(Mr. Zobrist's program and CHAOS were among the last that I truly wanted to see. Others of slightly less intent desire would be Sargon 2 & 3 source and such.)

A few months back somebody from here contacted me about the site and I explained the situation etc. I assume he came back and reported his findings...

Anyway, it's unlikely I'll work up the energy to get started in that again. I'd love to feel up to doing it and wanting to do it, but I just don't see it happening.

So I was wondering if anybody wanted to post my collection and notes.

I'm pretty sure I know where the archives are, along with notes, the very poorly OCR'ed source to a couple Cray Blitz (the type face was so small and generic there really was no difference between capital Oh and zero and so on.)

If Mr. Hyatt would be willing to host it, I'll be happy (slow, but happy...) to gather up the files and post a link for him to grab the stuff.

Same for anybody else.

(If somebody wants the scanned images of Blitz & CrayBlitz I can include them, but otherwise I wont bother.)

I was very careful about copyrights and distribution rights etc. but I don't think anybody would genuinely care if the files were posted by somebody else, provided it's not posted on a site that tries to enforce its own copyright and distribution rights upon them.

Those authors were pioneers in the field and were kind enough to let me share their work. I don't want to screw them.

Mr. Hyatt would actually be one of the best choices due to his long term status in the computer chess community. But that, of course, would be up to him.

[musketeerchess]

Hi
I will be pleased to host them.

www.musketeerchess.com not designed for old chess programs but this is a part of chess history and we must continue

[stegemma]

I hold the domain "scacchi.us" that I really don't use. It is not related to any commercial software and the name "scacchi" means chess in italian. I can host almost anything, there.

[bob]

It's been a long long time since I've been here.

I used to do an 'antique' computer chess programs web site and collect & preserve the classic programs we grew up with (or for most of those here, were around before they were even born... If was after 1985 or so, I didn't care about the program.)

Unfortunately due to a variety of personal issues (family, long term depression, and general "I don't care about anything" feelings) the whole project kind of became abandoned.

A year or so ago Mr. Zobrist contacted me saying he had finally recovered his program. I suggested he get in touch with Mr. Hyatt about finding a place that it could be posted & shared.

I sent a similar message to the CHAOS selective search program author suggesting the same thing, but I didn't hear back.

(Mr. Zobrist's program and CHAOS were among the last that I truly wanted to see. Others of slightly less intent desire would be Sargon 2 & 3 source and such.)

A few months back somebody from here contacted me about the site and I explained the situation etc. I assume he came back and reported his findings...

Anyway, it's unlikely I'll work up the energy to get started in that again. I'd love to feel up to doing it and wanting to do it, but I just don't see it happening.

So I was wondering if anybody wanted to post my collection and notes.

I'm pretty sure I know where the archives are, along with notes, the very poorly OCR'ed source to a couple Cray Blitz (the type face was so small and generic there really was no difference between capital Oh and zero and so on.)

If Mr. Hyatt would be willing to host it, I'll be happy (slow, but happy...) to gather up the files and post a link for him to grab the stuff.

Same for anybody else.

(If somebody wants the scanned images of Blitz & CrayBlitz I can include them, but otherwise I wont bother.)

I was very careful about copyrights and distribution rights etc. but I don't think anybody would genuinely care if the files were posted by somebody else, provided it's not posted on a site that tries to enforce its own copyright and distribution rights upon them.

Those authors were pioneers in the field and were kind enough to let me share their work. I don't want to screw them.

Mr. Hyatt would actually be one of the best choices due to his long term status in the computer chess community. But that, of course, would be up to him.

I can certainly host the stuff on my web page where I have the crafty source and stuff...

We need to figure out a way (drop box, etc, and UAB has a drop box facility you can use remotely to send me large things)...

A couple of others have also replied, and I believe that to be a really good idea. More copies make it less likely that oldies will accidentally disappear when a machine fails...

[Carey]

I found the archives of my old site, but it'll take me a while to figure out which one was the last, and so on. I was (and am) a big fan of backups but it does sometimes make it hard to keep track of which was the 'last' one.

The website and programs weren't large. Not even vaguely like those of today. The whole thing could probably zip up to maybe 20 or 30 megs.

Small enough to email or for me to stick on my DropBox account as a shared file.

And there aren't as many programs as I wanted, for that matter. Too many authors didn't have them anymore. Or didn't want to share. (Often because of code quality.)

No, the big problem would be if anybody wants the image scans of CrayBlitz and Blitz. That will add about 8 gig....

I will try to hurry on this because me having both the urge and the energy is a rare thing.


If anybody wants to continue work, there are many authors I wasn't able to get hold of and authors I need to recontact.

For example, I never could get hold of David Kittenger to see about the early versions of MyChess (the ones that couldn't promote unless it was to a captured piece.)

Somebody needs to recontact Dan Spraklen and see if he ever found the source for the early Sargons. He said he was going to donate that to the computer history museum but I don't think he ever did.

I suppose the source to any version of MacHack VI is a lost cause.

And the list goes on...

I have just sent a short email to Mr. Zobrist, Mr. Alexander and Mr. Swartz to see about their code. They were the last ones I had contacted before I had issues.

So if somebody wants a long term project, this could be one for you.

I always hesitated about keeping binaries of the old commercial programs, even if they were abandonware, but it would have been nice.

I also wanted to get a 6502, z80, and 6809 cpu emulator and hook them up to a WB interface (with patches for specific programs, of course) but I never got around to that either.

[stegemma]

Hyatt would be the right choice, because he is a long time chess programmer and he's a part of our chess programming history. Still I can simply put all of your backups on my site, where anybody can download it and continue keeping your works alive. As said by Bob, having multiple copies online is good, to avoid loosing your work if somebody suddenly disappear. For sample, in Italy, we have the G6 group, to collect all of our chess programming experience and it is a way to keep interest alive on our hobby. The "old" software should never be lost; today we can have virtual machines to simulate some of the older machine/OS and emulators for a lot of various home computers and consoles; this could help a lot, because just a binary of a dead computer is unusable.

[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

[Ajedrecista]

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.

[Carey]

Hyatt would be the right choice, because he is a long time chess programmer and he's a part of our chess programming history. Still I can simply put all of your backups on my site, where anybody can download it and continue keeping your works alive. As said by Bob, having multiple copies online is good, to avoid loosing your work if somebody suddenly disappear. For sample, in Italy, we have the G6 group, to collect all of our chess programming experience and it is a way to keep interest alive on our hobby. The "old" software should never be lost; today we can have virtual machines to simulate some of the older machine/OS and emulators for a lot of various home computers and consoles; this could help a lot, because just a binary of a dead computer is unusabToole.

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.

[Carey]

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.