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Skybird · 10-06-22, 07:39 AM

I found more, I almost forgot that I had shot these photos in 2006. Found them at Google Photos. This is my small collection of machines, one more, a Fidelity Avantgarde (!) with a rare and back then extremely expensive program (!) unfortunately is dysfunctional and in the basement, not on the pics.

My first machine I ever got for christmas. The CC Voice.

My second, two years later. Its the M-II.

And my third from back then, a Mephisto Exclusive, square size 4 cm. The Munich model had 5cm. The cartreidges could be easily switched between computers. The coolest looking chess computer ever, imho.:

The wood unfortunately has suffered in colour, the light wood became dark, the dark became light, and today its difficult to discriminate the two, th epic is 14 or 15 years old. Else, it still works tip-top fully functional. They all do. The images are from 2005 or so.

The Mephisto programs all can be had legally and free from Ed Schroeder'S website in emulated format so that you can run them on Windows without further software, even the GUI mimicks the hardware keys and display. LINK Its strange to see the software calculating 16 half-moves ahead in 3 seconds this way while back then it would have lasted hours and hours and then more hours, if it ever would have reached that far (memory ran out easily). Hardware has come a long way since then...

Astonishing also is that back then everybody was assuming future hikes in playing strength of software would be driven exlcusively by hardware acceleration. Brute Force software appeared to be the thing of the future. For some time, it was. But today, the unbelievable playing strength indeed is driven by algorithm quality and celver assessment criteria and positional "knowledge", and not so much by speed - these programs are killers that even have grandmasters for breakfast, and run on small devices of relatively limited power, compared to fully equipped PCs or mainframes. The selectivity of Shannon-B code has led to a qulity in code that is good for what it is and is less depending on hardware speed alone. The latter was interesting mainly for creating endgame tablebase and such databases.

Today, many professionals would absolutely agree that computers have in parts rewritten theory, and have totally changed the style and playing between humans on the pro tournament level. Its a different chess, more economic, more brutal, less romantic and adventurous. I liked the old world much better. The human scale has been lost. There are calls for altering the starting positions of pieces to level the starting ground again. The theoretic knowledge today is so total and complete that it really does the game no good service, I think. At the pro level. Amateurs like us must not worry.

10-06-22, 07:39 AM	#29
Skybird Soaring Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: the mental asylum named Germany Posts: 42,781 Downloads: 10 Uploads: 0	I found more, I almost forgot that I had shot these photos in 2006. Found them at Google Photos. This is my small collection of machines, one more, a Fidelity Avantgarde (!) with a rare and back then extremely expensive program (!) unfortunately is dysfunctional and in the basement, not on the pics. My first machine I ever got for christmas. The CC Voice. My second, two years later. Its the M-II. And my third from back then, a Mephisto Exclusive, square size 4 cm. The Munich model had 5cm. The cartreidges could be easily switched between computers. The coolest looking chess computer ever, imho.: The wood unfortunately has suffered in colour, the light wood became dark, the dark became light, and today its difficult to discriminate the two, th epic is 14 or 15 years old. Else, it still works tip-top fully functional. They all do. The images are from 2005 or so. The Mephisto programs all can be had legally and free from Ed Schroeder'S website in emulated format so that you can run them on Windows without further software, even the GUI mimicks the hardware keys and display. LINK Its strange to see the software calculating 16 half-moves ahead in 3 seconds this way while back then it would have lasted hours and hours and then more hours, if it ever would have reached that far (memory ran out easily). Hardware has come a long way since then... Astonishing also is that back then everybody was assuming future hikes in playing strength of software would be driven exlcusively by hardware acceleration. Brute Force software appeared to be the thing of the future. For some time, it was. But today, the unbelievable playing strength indeed is driven by algorithm quality and celver assessment criteria and positional "knowledge", and not so much by speed - these programs are killers that even have grandmasters for breakfast, and run on small devices of relatively limited power, compared to fully equipped PCs or mainframes. The selectivity of Shannon-B code has led to a qulity in code that is good for what it is and is less depending on hardware speed alone. The latter was interesting mainly for creating endgame tablebase and such databases. Today, many professionals would absolutely agree that computers have in parts rewritten theory, and have totally changed the style and playing between humans on the pro tournament level. Its a different chess, more economic, more brutal, less romantic and adventurous. I liked the old world much better. The human scale has been lost. There are calls for altering the starting positions of pieces to level the starting ground again. The theoretic knowledge today is so total and complete that it really does the game no good service, I think. At the pro level. Amateurs like us must not worry. __________________ If you feel nuts, consult an expert. Last edited by Skybird; 10-06-22 at 04:19 PM.