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Mike
Hello Nick & All
An interesting find Nick.
This one had escaped my Timeline up to now.
When SciSys/Saitek programmer Craig Barnes contributed a few posts to the HIARCS forum in 2010 he mentioned that he had a Kasparov Advanced Talking Chess -
HIARCS Chess Forums :: View topic - list of our chess computers , let's share it
Perhaps he would also know more about its origins? He left an email address.
As to whether the Spracklens were 100% responsible for the Sparc I don't know. They started on the project in early 1990 and the Sparc was not released for sale until autumn 1993. They struggled to produce a program strong enough to compete with the top machines of the day. Through the three years it was reported more than once that they were no longer working on it. Meanwhile Morsch signed up with Saitek in 1991 and De Koning did the Risc 2500 for them in 1992. Just speculating but perhaps Craig Barnes and De Koning had a hand in the Sparc?
How about a nice game of chess?
Mike
Hi Mike,
Thanks for sharing the Craig Barnes Link. I had forgotten all about it. I remember reading it.
So based on this information Julio Kaplan's Company and Craig Barnes stuck around with Saitek up to around 1996/1997.
He also confirms that a lot of modifications were always made to make each computer a little different and unique, from Tutorials, modifying opening books and the little tweak here and there.
So from this we can make the assumption that in many cases the programs were not 100% the same as what the original chess programmer wrote?
Hence categorizing clones becomes a little more of a science where details have to be consindered and looked into. A modified program may or may not play 100% the same from the start of the chess game to the end of chess game, because we do not know what was changed, when and where in the process.
So regarding Sparc we can assume a scale as follows
100% <---- All Spracklen ------------------- Part Spracklen -------------> 0% Spracklen
The same actually applies with my new found Saitek Chesster, we do not know what additional modifications were made in order to make the program work in Saitek Hardware... ie different opening book? I am thinking that based on the games I played above that the opening books seem light. Therefore the same above scale could be applied to the above and perhaps in the Saitek Chesster case programmers could be Spracklen/Barnes or Spracklen/Barnes/Kaplan or even some other configurations of Programmers?
The same actually applies to Fidelity Chesster, it is certain the Spracklens did not write the speach, therefore someone else would have had to make changes to merge the chess programm to other features, including opening book etc.
Interesting stuff.
Best regards,
Nick