David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#1

Post by jermo » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:09 PM UTC

David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)
thad.frogley.info

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#2

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:46 PM UTC

Why does the author say "memory" when he means "disk space"? Or does he actually mean "memory", as in "RAM"? In that case, why would the size of the executable matter?

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#3

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:47 PM UTC

TL;DR - chess, in 1K RAM including video and OS memory space.

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#4

Post by ctdonath » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:48 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #2

Why does the author say "memory" when he means "disk space"? Or does he actually mean "memory", as in "RAM"? In that case, why would the size of the executable matter?

There was no "disk" on a ZX81. Storage was audio cassette tape.

The size of the executable mattered because it all had to fit in 1024 bytes RAM (no "K", no "M", certainly no "G") with all video & operating system memory.

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#5

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

StavrosK wrote: post #2

Why does the author say "memory" when he means "disk space"? Or does he actually mean "memory", as in "RAM"? In that case, why would the size of the executable matter?

[deleted]

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#6

Post by tibbon » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

Link to the code: http://users.ox.ac.uk/~uzdm0006/scans/1kchess/

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#7

Post by luma » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:53 PM UTC

If you can't castle, you can't promote a pawn, and you can't en passant, it isn't chess.

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#8

Post by 3327 » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

Holy 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...

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#9

Post by StavrosK » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:54 PM UTC

ctdonath wrote: post #4

StavrosK wrote: post #2

Why does the author say "memory" when he means "disk space"? Or does he actually mean "memory", as in "RAM"? In that case, why would the size of the executable matter?

There was no "disk" on a ZX81. Storage was audio cassette tape. The size of the executable mattered because it all had to fit in 1024 bytes RAM (no "K", no "M", certainly no "G") with all video & operating system memory.

Oh wow, I didn't know that, thanks.

By the way, to whomever downvoted a legitimate question: Nice.

Re: David Horne's 1K Chess on the ZX81 (2001)

#10

Post by samatman » Thu, Mar 05, 2015, 4:55 PM UTC

Thanks 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...