Fidelity Chess Challenger Voice

19-04-2021

Fidelity Chess Challenger Voice

Is there a web implementation of the Fidelity Chess Challenger?

Chess Challenger Voice
Fidelity Chess Challenger Voice Review

If not, is there any software code available?

I ask because had a Fidelity Chess Challenger in 1979, and used it frequently until it bugged out in 1984 and got tossed. Sadly I dont know the version, as there were at least ten, from ELO 800- >2000 probably at that time. But, still I imagine that many of us had a FCC too,and wonder after playing for years, where it stands in terms of strength. Memory can fool us. It would be fun to play it again.

I do not need more stuff though. Also not interested in reasons why this should not be done, is dumb, or could just be accomplished by getting a used device. Thats not the point. Yes it is still possible to purchase the device, used on eBay. But realistically, you played against a program- Ron Nelsons software built partly on Altair I gather. It stands nearly toe to toe with Steve Wozniak's Apple I in terms of technical advance. I would imagine that the logic was also the basis of other evolutions of product in other devices, and those implentations are also of interest. You can imagine the logic lives as a phylogeny of life, a tree of code, one derived from another, until Stockfish for example, each more impressive than the last.

The Fidelity Chess Challenger device had no idea where the pieces were on the board, except via history. That is, there are no unique chip sensors in each piece. That was the myth and magic. You could believe you were playing against a device that 'knew' where they were, almost human. But it had a history that it held in memory. So, if you made a wrong move, or even en passant, it would frequently ERR and you would have to stop. The move tree would then have a flaw and couldn't proceed programmaticaly. Nonetheless despite the flaws it was groundbreaking, the first commercial device of its kind, and beatable by regular players. I liked it a lot.

Today I seek the ghost of this machine. The first modern program with legitimate skills. The physical embodiment of the device was nice, but realistically the software program, as implemented on the web somewhere, would be awesome historically, and widely distributable to the world. I cannot find any version of it online however, without getting into a mess of emulators, forums, and backporting old drivers on new hardware. It's a morass to figure out. It seems insurmountable. But there are better coders than I out there. The spirit must have been captured, and archived somewhere. So I open the question here.

Your Champion Sensory Challenger is not a contrived chess board that has been gimmicked with lights and pushbutton keys —Challenger is, in every sense, a versatile and talented comput- erized chess playing opponent. The voice feature is not a tape recording, but a computer created voice capability that talks in response to Challenger's. The Fidelity Chess Challenger device had no idea where the pieces were on the board, except via history. That is, there are no unique chip sensors in each piece. That was the myth and magic. You could believe you were playing against a device that 'knew' where they were, almost human. But it had a history that it held in memory. Voice Chess Challenger Advanced, Model UVC, English. Fidelity Gakken Hanimex Lexibook Mephisto Milton Bradley Novag Phoenix Systems RadioShack/Go RFT/VEB Sakkara.

This call is an open post to port the programs FCC1-10, and X, to Javascript, wherever they may be. Sadly I might not be able to do it myself, and am considering organizing an effort to do so publically. It could then be dropped into a web portal, and playable by anyone. If there is a link to that, and it exists already as a code repo, or a binary, then even better. The logic could be rewritten. While fixing the flaws would be another level of effort, and would ruin the historic nature of it, thats part of the gestalt of this effort.

What's out there? How can it be moved forward? Can Fidelity Chess Challenger 1-10 be placed in a web page? Are there other historic ones that were derived from FCC that are available?

Thanks!

Home * Engines * Chess Challenger

Sensory Chess Challenger, 1982, 6502^[1]

Chess Challenger, or Fidelity Chess Challenger,
was a series of dedicated chess computers produced and market by Fidelity Electronics. The Chess Challenger 1 was the first commercial chess computer of its kind in 1976, invented by Sidney Samole, with a program by Ron Nelson, developed for an Altair 8800 Microcomputer with an Intel8080 CPU. Further versions of Nelson's program run on a more advanced Z80 CPU, great commercial success was the Chess Challenger 7^[2] in 1979. Ed English, an early game programmer affiliated with Fidelity Electronics in 1979/80, improved the alpha-beta implementation to double the playing speed ^[3].

2Sargon becomes Challenger
4Chess Challenger X
7Publications
8Forum Posts
9External Links

Chess Challenger Prototype, 1976, 8080^[4] .

In 1980, when Dan and Kathe Spracklen started to collaborate with Samole, a 6502 Version of Chess Challenger was built for a Sargon III port. The 6502 was better suited for Sargon than Z80. Excerpt from their oral history how it went with Fidelity ^[5] :

WMCCC 1980, MCC 1980

The immediate success was the lucky win of the 1st World Microcomputer Chess Championship, September 4 to 9, 1980, in London. Chess Challenger with a 6502 CPU, notably winning last three of five rounds against three of four other Sargon incarnations! While the ICGA tournament site states a Z80A CPU ^[6], Kevin O’Connell reported the World Microcomputer Chess Champion was equipped with a MOS Technology processor, despite newest Fidelity computers were shipped with Z80/Z80A ^[7]. As further confirmed by Fidelity Electronics' Vice President Myron Samole in an Personal Computing interview, the Champion Sensory Challenger, which also won the MCC 1980 at September 5 to 7 in San Jose, California had a program written around the 6502 chip ^[8].

German Chess Challenger brochure with Prof. Heinz Haber endorsement ^[9]
Chess Challenger Sensory Voice^[10], a Z80 based Nelson Program as Micro Champ? ^[11]

Chess Challenger Voice

WCCC 1980

The Chess Challenger which played the WCCC 1980 end of September in Linz and finished last was presumably an older Z80 based computer with a Nelson program ^[12]. Fidelity's flagship end of the 70s, with World Champion 1980 advertisement was the Chess Challenger Sensory Voice. The first 6502 based computer with a Spracklen program commercially available appeared in 1981 as Champion Sensory Chess Challenger^[13] .

ACM 1980

The strong third place at the ACM 1980 in October was again a great success, only losing to Belle in the last round ^[14]. Description given from the ACM booklet with mentioned authors Dan and Kathe Spracklen, Ronald Nelson, Frank Duason^[15]

This marks the first appearance in an ACM tournament for this popular machine. Chess Challenger is written in assembly language for a 6502 microprocessor. It has 20k bytes of memory and executes about 1,000,000 inst/sec. A book of about 1,000 moves is used. The program uses the alpha-beta algorithm with iterative deepening.

Fidelity electronics chess challenger manual

Using the same name at almost the same time for programs with different authors and CPU architectures caused some confusion by potential customers, not to mention tournament organizers. Accordant to their product lineup and nomination, and caused by former tournament rules, permitting multiple, but different named entries from the same author, and commercial availability of participating computers, Fidelity Electronics somehow was 'forced' to continue the naming obfuscation in further tournaments, where Fidelity computers with Spracklen programs participated as Fidelity X, Challenger-X, Elegance, Elite, Private Line, and Sensory.

ACM 1986

In 1986, at the 17th ACM North American Computer Chess Championship, Fidelity showed up with a huge experimental, parallel machine, named Chess Challenger X. Authors were Ron Nelson, Dan Spracklen, Kathe Spracklen, and Danny Kopec as Book author. It had a Z80 controller, and 16 or more 68000 16-bit processors. The controller was written in C, the 16 or more Spracklen programs in assembler^[16].

Chess Challenger X scored 50%, losing from Recom and Belle. Notably, in the same tournament, another Fidelity computer programmed by the Spracklens with a Kopec book took part, as Fidelity Experimental with a 68020 processor. It did not score better in that strong field and finally placed 10th.

ACM 1988

At the ACM 1988, the new experimental version of a 68030 based micro called Chess Challenger X showed a remarkable performance. Mentioned authors from the tournament report by Monty Newborn and Danny Kopec^[17] were Dan and Kathe Spracklen as well as Ron Nelson. The 32-bit program, written in 68030 assembly language, drew Deep Thought and won versus Waycool, the current World Champion Cray Blitz, and HiTech. Chess Challenger X was likely the forerunner of the commercial available Fidelity Elite Avant Garde V9^[18] . One year later, at the WCCC 1989 in Edmonton, a similar machine, presumably with a further developed program, played under the name Fidelity X and finished sixth.

1978 ...

Editor (1978). Black-box war. Personal Computing, Vol. 2, No. 11, pp. 17, November 1978 » Boris
Don Gerue, Russ McNeil (1979). Chess Challenger-10 wins Microchess Tourney. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 2, pp. 63 » The Penrod Memorial Microchess Tournament
John Larkins (1979). Inside Chess Challenger. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 11, pp. 78
Editor (1979). Misadvantages of a Chess Traveler. Personal Computing, Vol. 3, No. 12, pp. 75

1980 ...