Excalibur Mirage

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Excalibur Mirage [1]

Excalibur Mirage,
a robot type dedicated chess computer by Excalibur Electronics, released in 1996 [2]. The computer features a X-Y plotter type actuator with motor driven leadscrews and solenoid able to pick up and move the magnetic pieces, a sensory board, LCD, and a control button panel. The program is Ron Nelson's initial chess program developed for Excalibur, and ran on Hitachi's H8 controller at 10 MHz with 48 KiB ROM and 2 KiB RAM. The development was supported by chess consultant and opening book author Larry Kaufman [3] [4].

Failure Rates

Quote by Ron Nelson [5] 

But the Pop-Up Tent, Inc mechanical “engineer”, screwed up on the Mirage housing design and the main motor mounting was off axis and caused high failure rates.

Attack Maps

Quote by Ron Nelson [6] 

In 1981 at the California ACM Computer Chess Tournament, Kathy introduced me to their friend Ken Thompson. I asked him about his Belle hardware chess machine, and he was quick to explain how the Hardware Attack Bitmaps worked. I realized that attack bitmap approach was now in a Chess Challenger, but in software. I used the Belle Attack Map generation on my H8 program.

Tactical Quiescence

Further Quote by Ron Nelson [7] 

But it was my watching the games and the PRVs like you do, and we did at ACM tournaments that started me asking questions of Dan. Why can we not generate checks in the quiescent search? He said because it would blow up the search and slow down. Ok, I said, but what if we only generated checks that didn't occur as often, like a knight check that forked a major piece. He said, ummm,,, that would not take much and the search would not blow up.  So that is how we slowly started developing a tactical quiescent search that had all of the things a strong chess player explores when thinking of a tactical position. But I would see that the PRV was missing these obvious strong player "tricks" and have Dan look to see if he could add them. Because of the attack map, all this type of information was easily divined. At the Micro Tournament in Spain, it was music to my ears to have the Chess Master commentator, perhaps Mike Valvo, say The Fidelity unit was playing moves it had never before been capable of playing. Just like the Masters we played to get the certified rating, who were amazed.

I used this same type of tactical threat generation on the H8 machine, since I had attack maps with the needed information.

See also

Manual

Forum Posts

Excalibur Electronics by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 22, 2015
Excalibur Electronics by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 22, 2015
Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 23, 2015 » Excalibur
Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 23, 2015 » Fidelity Electronics, Sidney Samole
Re: Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 24, 2015 » Excalibur Mirage, Eric White
Re: Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 29, 2015
Chess Products Ron Nelson designed/programmed by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, January 11, 2016

External Links

Chess Computer

Misc

References

  1. ↑ Capture from the Video
  2. ↑ Chess Products Ron Nelson designed/programmed by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, January 11, 2016
  3. ↑ Excalibur Electronics by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 22, 2015
  4. ↑ Re: Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 23, 2015
  5. ↑ Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 23, 2015
  6. ↑ Excalibur Electronics by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 22, 2015
  7. ↑ Re: Ron Nelson by ChessChallenger, Hiarcs Forum, December 29, 2015

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