|
At the 9th World Microcomputer Chess Championship, which was held at Almeria, Spain, from September 24th to October 1st, 1988, Almeria became World Champion. Once again MEPHISTO dominated as it had done before in Glasgow (1984), Amsterdam (1985), Dallas (1986), and Rome (1987). This run of world championship success surely proved that that the world’s best chess programmer Richard Lang once again managed to improve the strength of his program. The improvement made by MEPHISTO and Richard Lang were numerous:
Hardware:
For the first time in a factory produced chess computer the enormous working memory capacity of 512 KB RAM (with Almeria 16 Bit) and 1024 KB (with Almeria 32 Bit) was introduced to the world of chess computers. This allowed the processing speed for a move to be increased considerably, compared to all previous chess computers.
Software:
The program in improved many areas:
Opening:
The opening library has been increased to about 7.000 variations with about 60,000 half-moves, which makes the program even more attractive to play with.
Middle game:
More chess knowledge was developed in this area of the game through improved strategical knowledge especially in pawn structure awareness. A more active game and pressing game together with pieces working harmoniously together greatly increased the play in the middle game.
Endgame:
Improved handling of advanced and connected passed pawns as well as improved King maneuverability in the endgame. Enormous increase of computing speed due to the use of hash tables.
New 16/32 Bit Display Module
This was the first time that MEPHISTO introduced a 32-digit display dot matrix display module. This greatly improved the menu driven dialogue with the game options and functions.
The program was sold in three versions: Motorola 68000, 68020 and 68030 microprocessors. This version is the Motorola 68000 16 Bit version. The playing strength is approximately ELO 2280 USCF.
|
