Dedicated chess computers

[thorstenczub]

I am doing a David Broughton memorial tournament in the moment, full of old machines.

David Broughton was the programmer of the Scisys chess champion MKV machine and won the title in 1981.
The successor of his program, the philidor MKVI was a very rare Modul for this machine and was never really tested well enough to
be known much for the public.

Now we find out about it.

I had to buy a few scisys MKV machines to have enough material to begin with.
And Steve uk was so nice to invent a new PCB that makes a philidor MKVI module out of a normal MKV module.

He is known in the computerchess scene for bringing old dedicated chess computers back, tune them to new speed or build new motherboards for the dying out old machines.

In the dedicated computerchess scene we have 3 major developments.

First the emulator scene. Many old machines are emulated for pc. So you don’t need to repair those hardware anymore.
Second the very clever technicians such as berger and Steve uk who repair parts, exchange parts and even build new parts for old machines,

The third area is that of the NEW dedicated chess computer companies.

DGT
Pewatronic
Millennium
Phoenix

They all come out with new dedicated chess computers.

[thorstenczub]

I am doing a strong dedicated chess computer tournament vs. some old dos engines.

To give the dedicated chess computers, even when they are strong, a chance against the dos programs , I reduce the speed of the hardware that is emulated in the Dos box to 1000 cycles.

It is said that the 8088 XT CPU Running on 4.77 MHz needs 315 cycles.

The 286 AT with 12,5 MHz had 2750 cycles.


So my chosen 1000 cycles is between the two.

Not really strong, the dedicated chess computers should have chances.