A83: Re: Joining memory

To: <assembly-83@lists.ticalc.org>
Subject: A83: Re: Joining memory
From: "David Phillips" <david@acz.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Aug 2000 20:05:04 -0600
References: <000b01c004b8$18320a00$0200a8c0@we.mediaone.net>
Reply-To: assembly-83@lists.ticalc.org


First of all, this idea wouldn't work.  No one would play it, and you can't
share memory like that.  But ignoring this idea...

If you had done some research, you would know that there have been several
versions of chess for machines with less than 27k of memory.  The problem is
that with a slow CPU like the z80, and without a lot of memory for the
movement trees, it turns out being incredibly slow.  Some good places to
look would be on info about the TRS-80, Sinclair Spectrum, etc.  You could
also look at machines that had weak CPU's and small memory spaces, like the
NES and Atari 2600.  I thought I remember there being a Chess cart for the
2600, but in my hundreds of ROM's I don't have it.  The 2600 had 2k of ROM
and 128 bytes of RAM (though it was possible to put more on a cart, that
usually didn't happen due to the high cost of those parts 20 years ago).
There was at least one version of chess for the NES, Chess Master, probably
more.  I don't have the ROM, but the NES has less built in work memory than
the TI-83.  There are several for the Game Boy, which has a Z80 and not very
much work memory (though the GBC has more than the TI-83).  The Chessmaster
GB game runs on the DMG units, so it can't use very much work RAM.  With the
GB version of Chessmaster, on the easy difficulty levels it only takes a few
seconds to calculate moves.  On the harder levels, I have heard it can take
over an hour.  And the algorithm used there is probably quite optimized.
Plus, they may have a lot of lookup tables stored in the ROM.

Just some thoughts.

> I was reading some of the TI-Chess 89 chess articles on ticalc and an
> interesting idea popped into my head. The TI-83 only have 27K or so of
> memory. If someone is making a larger program and the game is for two
> players through the link there could be two versions of the game. One
would
> hold the first half of the game data and the other version would hold the
> second half of the game data. Then a game could be around 50K and work on
> the 83. Of course one problem with this would be that only version one
could
> play with version two. Version one wouldn't be able to play with version
one
> or version two with version two. Just wanted to run this idea by everyone
to
> see what everyone thinks.

References:

A83: Joining memory

From: "Apparatus" <apparatus@mediaone.net>