Altair Chess

[Mark Kipping]

Hi everyone,

As far as I can see, at least two chess programs have been written (not in BASIC) for the Altair 8800.

One of these is "Chess Master" by Dynacomp(?)
In 1976 Ronald Nelson developed a chess program for the Altair 8800. This could be the same software, I don't know.

Would there be a way to have one of these chess games available as a "disk" that can be loaded in the Altair Clone?

[jibanes]

+1

[toml_12953]

Hi everyone,

As far as I can see, at least two chess programs have been written (not in BASIC) for the Altair 8800.

One of these is "Chess Master" by Dynacomp(?)
In 1976 Ronald Nelson developed a chess program for the Altair 8800. This could be the same software, I don't know.

Would there be a way to have one of these chess games available as a "disk" that can be loaded in the Altair Clone?

It should be easy enough to do yourself if you have the object code as a bin file on the PC. You can transfer individual files to/from the Clone.

Tom L

[Mark Kipping]

Thanks, Tom!

I'll try to find object code that I can use for this.
I've found it for a Sol20 computer, but I think that will need many modifications to work on a terminal screen as a display...

And I've found the executable file SARGON.COM, that seems to be running on CP/M 2.2.
I'm not sure if this would run on the Altair.

[AltairClone]

And I've found the executable file SARGON.COM, that seems to be running on CP/M 2.2.
I'm not sure if this would run on the Altair.

I've recently looked at the source for the first version of SARGON and unfortunately, it won't run on an 8080 processor as it utilizes many Z-80 specific instructions.

Mike

[quincy451]

Well is z80 support possible?

[kwiebe]

What about Microchess?

http://s3data.computerhistory.org/chess ... 302029.pdf

Would that work?

Here is the thread discussing several programs, including Microchess:

http://hiarcs.net/forums/viewtopic.php? ... 7c8a1ac35a

In the thread there is also a download link for an archive of the chess programs.

[Synoptic]

hmm
I could put that on my telnet altair. A chess game...

Just need to remember how to compile my menu.com ;P

[GlassTTY]

I have a copy of MICROCHESS for the Altair (CP/M) at the following link. This disk image boots to CP?M2.2b and includes the source and build tools. The source consists of the hex dump along with patches described in October 1977 MICROCHESS notes. I can't claim any credit for any of this work apart from compiling the code and creating the disk image for use with my AltairClone. Full details here...

https://glasstty.com/experiencing-the-altair-8800/

[kwiebe]

Wow, thanks GlassTTY - gonna give this a try on my clone!