Also pertinent: Peter Jennings' Microchess for the 1K Kim-1.
His page says it "was the first game program sold for home computers", shipped in 1976.
David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
41–50 of 154 posts
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#42Thanks to the Archive, the code and commentary is available: https://archive.org/stream/your-computer-magazine-1982-12/Yo... https://archive.org/stream/your-computer-magazine-1983-01/Yo...
Oh, wow: there are issues of Your Computer on archive.org. Thanks. I loved that magazine.
There was a great interview on The Web Ahead recently with Jason Scott about Archive.org and the challenge of preserving these amazing bits of history: http://5by5.tv/webahead/97
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#43Everything I write is the greatest. Anytime I write or update something, it's the new greatest. Simple!
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#44Given that the TI-8X series of calculators run on a z80 chip, we could port this almost as-is to that little machine, right?
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#45By the standards of the linked article I would say the greatest program is the original Elite game.
A whole universe complete with star systems and 3D models for spaceships plus some other content like missions... I think the name says it: elite.
All in 52 kb on disk.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#46Impressive, Elite game also comes to mind. For you who don't remember, it was a really immersive game with huge universe that can fit on a floppy drive.
I remember when my friend show me proudly cd he just purchased with it, and didn't believe game is small enough to not needing it. His face was precious when he opened cd and saw how big the game was.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#47I'm not sure why the size of a program has any serious bearing on it's greatness. Sure it's an incredible feat of engineering, but shouldn't the "greatest program ever written" be primarily judged by what it allows us to do, not need to do, to build, or what insights it provides?
For example, certainly the first widely used assembler was a "greater" program than any chess game, not only because it stopped us from having to track memory locations by hand, but because it allowed us to dedicate our brain cycles to actual problem solving and writing more useful programs.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't downvote you, but you asked a question the answer to which is easily available with the most trivial of web searches. You assumed he meant "disk space", assuming the author made a mistake when you could easily have checked and not asked the question here. In some sense, it's not a legitimate question for this context.
The question asked exactly is the sort of thing that "the most trivial of web searches" wouldn't have answered as well as either of the replies already up. One reply puts it into historical context, and educates the reader about the memory/persistence model of the ZX81. The other reply points out that the lack of virtual memory and whatnot means that, in previous times, you needed to have the entire thing loaded into…
Well - you could just search for "ZX81".
First thing that appears is a Wikipedia article which explains how the memory and off-line storage worked.
So I don't think finding this out would have been rocket science.
Having said that, and having written my first code on a ZX81 (if you don't count an even older TI programmable calculator with even less RAM) I'm old enough to be amused by the question. :)
However you slice it, chess in 1K was awesome coding.
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#49Just for the record, the Atari 2600 also had a chess game with AI. It also had only 1024 bits of RAM, but it had access to all of it because there was no OS or underlying hardware support, like in the Speccy. So while this is definitely amazing, the 2600 version is very close in the "insanely well coded" category, especially because the 2600 had some SERIOUSLY quirky hardware to deal with. For example, on the 2600, y…
I learned how to play chess as a kid from that 2600 cartridge!
Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
#50Holy smokes... blown away. 1K RAM? less then most email's we write... Now'a days rockstars and Ninja's are the glorified ruby guys who "seemingly" do Ruby/django magic... This is what counts...This is the real deal...
this is an interesting historical artifact demonstrating the skill of one individual. its not "what counts", it was a low importance side project in its time, and is interesting today only as a piece of history, not for any lasting technology impact it had. why you're using this as an excuse to take cheap shots at web developers is beyond me.
Not true. A lot of people were so amazed by the potential of ZX81 game programming they became programmers themselves - sometimes games programmers, but just as often general developers.
If the ZX81 hadn't done anything of interest it wouldn't have persuaded those people that awesome programming was possible.
Dismissing this kind of coding as a side show is arrogant and ill-informed.
The ZX81 itself was a similar project that squeezed maximum usefulness and affordability out of very limited resources.
IMO this illustrates the difference between engineers and hacks. Hacks are pleased when code sort-of works. Engineers are only satisfied with designs that are minimal, elegant, and use resources as efficiently as possible.
This actually matters. Efficient coding influences everything from battery life to mobile data costs to cloud fees to data centre profitability.
Sure, it's easy to ignore. It's just not very professional.