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Sargon (chess)
''Sargon'' (or ''SARGON'') is a line of chess-playing software for personal computers. The original ''SARGON'' from 1978 was written in assembly language by Dan and Kathleen "Kathe" Spracklen for the Z80-based Wavemate Jupiter III. History ''SARGON'' was introduced at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire where it won the first computer chess tournament held strictly for microcomputers, with a score of 5–0. This success encouraged the authors to seek financial income by selling the program directly to customers. Since magnetic media were not widely available at the time, the authors placed an advert in ''Byte'' magazine selling for $15 photocopied listings that would work in any Z80-based microcomputer. Availability of the source code allowed porting to other machines. For example, the March–April 1979 issue of '' Recreational Computing'' describes a project that converted Sargon to an 8080 program by using macros. Later the Spracklens were contacted by Hayden Books and a boo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apple II
The Apple II (stylized as ) is an 8-bit home computer and one of the world's first highly successful mass-produced microcomputer products. It was designed primarily by Steve Wozniak; Jerry Manock developed the design of Apple II's foam-molded plastic case, Rod Holt developed the switching power supply, while Steve Jobs's role in the design of the computer was limited to overseeing Jerry Manock's work on the plastic case. It was introduced by Jobs and Wozniak at the 1977 West Coast Computer Faire, and marks Apple's first launch of a personal computer aimed at a consumer market—branded toward American households rather than businessmen or computer hobbyists. ''Byte'' magazine referred to the Apple II, Commodore PET 2001, and TRS-80 as the "1977 Trinity". As the Apple II had the defining feature of being able to display color graphics, the Apple logo was redesigned to have a spectrum of colors. The Apple II is the first model in the Apple II series, followed by Apple ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sargon I Screenshot (notation)
Sargon (Akkadian: ''Šar-ru-gi'', later ''Šarru-kīn'', meaning "the faithful king" or "the legitimate king") was the name of three kings in ancient Mesopotamia, sometimes adopted in modern times as both a given name and a surname. Mesopotamian kings * Sargon of Akkad ( 2334–2279 BC), founder of the Akkadian Empire * Sargon I ( 1920–1881 BC), king of the Old Assyrian city-state * Sargon II ( BC), king of the Neo-Assyrian Empire Modern people Given name * Sargon Boulus (1944–2007), Assyrian-Iraqi poet * Sargon Dadesho (born 1948), Assyrian nationalist * Sargon Duran (born 1987), Assyrian Austrian football player * Sargon Gabriel (born 1947), Assyrian folk music singer Surname * Brett Sargon (born 1991), New Zealand curler * Cindy Sargon, Assyrian Australian TV chef * Simon Sargon (born 1938), Assyrian American composer and professor Nickname * Carl Benjamin, British political commentator and YouTuber known as Sargon of Akkad Characters * Sargon the Sorcerer, a com ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exchange (chess)
In chess, an exchange or trade of chess pieces is a series of closely related moves, typically sequential, in which the two players each other's pieces. Any types of pieces except the kings may possibly be exchanged, i.e. captured in an exchange, although a king can capture an opponent's piece. Either the player of the white or the black pieces may make the first capture of the other player's piece in an exchange, followed by the other player capturing a piece of the first player, often referred to as a ''recapture''. Commonly, the word "exchange" is used when the pieces exchanged are of the same type or of about equal value, which is an ''even exchange''. According to chess tactics, a bishop and a knight are usually of about equal value. If the values of the pieces exchanged are not equal, then the player who captures the higher-valued piece can be said to be ''up the exchange'' or ''wins the exchange'', while the opponent who captures the lower-valued piece is ''down the e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sargon III
''Sargon III'' is a computer chess software. It is a sequel to ''Sargon II''. Gameplay ''Sargon III'' allots a time budget based on which level of play is chosen. It has nine levels, each of which can be played in hard or easy mode. It has an average response time of five seconds per move on the lowest level, and an unlimited amount of time on the highest level. Players can take back moves, ask for help, or force the computer's move. It features a 2-D display. It recreates 107 great chess matches for players to study. Development ''Sargon III'' was a complete rewrite from scratch. Instead of an ''exchange evaluator'', this version used a ''capture search'' algorithm. Also included was a chess opening repertoire. This third version was written originally for the 6502 assembler and was commercially published by Hayden Software in 1983. Apple contacted the Spracklens and, after a port for 68000 assembly, ''Sargon III'' was the first third-party executable software for the Macintosh. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cray Blitz
Cray Blitz was a computer chess program written by Robert Hyatt, Harry L. Nelson, and Albert Gower to run on the Cray supercomputer. It was derived from "Blitz" a program that Hyatt started to work on as an undergraduate. "Blitz" played its first move in the fall of 1968, and was developed continuously from that time until roughly 1980 when Cray Research chose to sponsor the program. Cray Blitz participated in computer chess events from 1980 through 1994 when the last North American Computer Chess Championship was held in Cape May, New Jersey. Cray Blitz won several ACM computer chess events, and two consecutive World Computer Chess Championships, the first in 1983 in New York City, and the second in 1986 in Cologne, Germany. The program Crafty is the successor to Cray Blitz and is still active and under development. References Chess computers Blitz Blitz, German for "lightning", may refer to: Military uses *Blitzkrieg, blitz campaign, or blitz, a type of military campaign ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Paul Masson
Paul Masson (1859 – October 22, 1940) was an early pioneer of California viticulture known for his brand of Californian sparkling wine. Biography Masson emigrated from the Burgundy region of France in 1878 (at the age of 19) to California, United States, where he met Charles Lefranc (owner of the '' Almaden Vineyard and Wine Company)'', one of a number of French immigrants who had expanded the viticulture introduced into the Santa Clara Valley by the Catholic mission fathers. Masson returned to France in 1880 to finish school at The Sorbonne. After college, he returned to San Jose, California due to the depression in the French wine industry caused by the Phylloxera plague and became the winemaker at Almaden. After the death of Lefranc, Masson purchased 573 acres in Saratoga, California, which he named ''La Cresta''. He set about to plant 60 acres, mainly Pinot Noir and Chardonnay with cuttings from Burgundy and re-named the new winery the Paul Masson Champagne Company, no ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Permanent Brain
In turn-based games, permanent brain (also called pondering) is the act of thinking during the opponent's turn. Chess engines that continue calculating even when it is not their turn to play end up choosing moves that are stronger than if they are barred from calculating on their opponent's turn. Use with chess programs The strength of chess programs depends very much on the amount of time allocated for calculating. Many chess programs use pondering to improve their strength. Current programs cannot create strategic plans, so a program simply tries to predict the opponent's move and begins to calculate its response. If the opponent's move has been guessed correctly, then the program continues to calculate. If the prediction fails, the program begins a new computation. Pondering is less effective than normal thinking. For example, if the program guesses 25% of the opponent's moves correctly, the use of pondering is on average equivalent to increasing the normal calculating time ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Space Gamer
''The Space Gamer'' was a magazine dedicated to the subject of science fiction and fantasy board games and tabletop role-playing games. It quickly grew in importance and was an important and influential magazine in its subject matter from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s. The magazine is no longer published, but the rights holders maintain a web presence using its final title ''Space Gamer/Fantasy Gamer''. History ''The Space Gamer'' (''TSG'') started out as a digest quarterly publication of the brand new Metagaming Concepts Metagaming Concepts, later known simply as Metagaming, was a company that published board games from 1974 to 1983. It was founded and owned by Howard Thompson, who designed the company's first game, '' Stellar Conquest''. The company also inven ... company in March 1975. Howard M. Thompson, the owner of Metagaming and the first editor of the magazine, stated "The magazine had been planned for after our third or fourth game but circumstances demand ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sargon II (video Game)
''Sargon II'' is a sequel to '' Sargon''. Both are computer chess programs for home computers. Development The Spracklens made significant improvements on the original program and released ''Sargon II''. In 1978 it tied for third at the ninth North American Computer Chess Championship despite being seeded ninth of 12 entries. ''Sargon'' finished only behind Belle and Chess 4.7, and defeated AWIT—running on a $5 million Amdahl mainframe—amazing the audience. That year they published a series of articles in ''BYTE'' on computer chess programming, stating "we think it would be nice if not everyone had to reinvent the wheel". ''Sargon II'' was ported to a variety of personal computers popular in the early 1980s.It was even ported to the 6809 variety of the FLEX operating system by Brian N. Baily and Charles B. Blish in August 1981, and that port may still be found within thi6809 FLEX emulation/ref> The game engine featured multiple levels of lookahead to make it more accessi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Rewrite (programming)
A rewrite in computer programming is the act or result of re-implementing a large portion of existing functionality without re-use of its source code. When the rewrite is not using existing code at all, it is common to speak of a rewrite from scratch. Motivations A piece of software is typically rewritten when one or more of the following apply: *its source code is not available or is only available under an incompatible license *its code cannot be adapted to a new target platform *its existing code has become too difficult to handle and extend *the task of debugging it seems too complicated *the programmer finds it difficult to understand its source code *developers learn new techniques or wish to do a big feature overhaul which requires much change *developers learn that new codes written may extend content options that can fix or overwrite previous problems *the programming language of the source code has to be changed Risks Several software engineers, such as Joel Spolsky ha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sharp MZ
The Sharp MZ is a series of personal computers sold in Japan and Europe (particularly Germany and Great Britain) by Sharp beginning in 1978. History Although commonly believed to stand for "Microcomputer Z80", the term MZ actually has its roots in the MZ-40K, a home computer kit produced by Sharp in 1978 which was based on Fujitsu's 4-bit MB8843 processor and provided a simple hexadecimal keypad for input. This was soon followed by the MZ-80K, K2, C, and K2E, all of which were based on 8-bit LH0080A Sharp CPU (compatible to Zilog Z80A) with an alphanumeric keyboard. From the first Z80 processor-based model to the MZ-2200 in 1983, the MZ computers included the PC, monitor, keyboard, and tape-based recorder in a single unit, similar to Commodore's PET series. It was also notable for not including a programming language or operating system in ROM. This invited a host of third-party companies, starting with Hudson Soft, to produce many languages and OSes for the system. In an ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exidy Sorcerer
The Sorcerer is a home computer system released in 1978 by the video game company Exidy. Based on the Zilog Z80 and the general layout of the emerging S-100 standard, the Sorcerer was comparatively advanced when released, especially when compared to the contemporary more commercially successful Commodore PET and TRS-80. The basic design was proposed by Paul Terrell, formerly of the Byte Shop, a pioneering computer store. Lacking strong support from its parent company, who were focused on the successful arcade game market, the Sorcerer was sold primarily through international distributors and technology licensing agreements. Distribution agreements with Dick Smith Electronics in Australia and Liveport in the UK as well as Compudata which included a manufacturing license to build, market and distribute the Tulip line of computers in Europe. The system remains relatively unknown outside these markets. The Exidy Data Systems division was sold to a Wall Street firm, Biotech, in 198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
