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The MEPHISTO MM 3000 also known as the MM I chess program is a modular version of the MEPHISTO III written by Thomas Nitsche and Elmar Henne. The module first came out in 1983, the same year as MEPHISTO III. Both had an 1802 processor. The difference between the two modeles however was the speed. The MM 3000 runs at 8 MHz whereas the MEPHISTO III runs at 6.1 MHz.
This 8 MHz speed seems fast at face value but in actuality an 1802 processor runs at about 1/8 of the speed of a 6502 chip. Therefore the processing speed of the MM 3000 would compare approximately to the speed of a Commodore 64 Home Computer which ran at 1.023 MHz (NTSC) and was first launched in 1982. Therefore the module itself, the first of the modular chess board series modules (not counting the ESB Modular boards that came out the previous year (1982), was not state-of-art with regards to CPU power or game performance. In 1983 Fidelity Electronic was busy launching such gems as Elite A/S, Elite A/S Budapest and Super 9 with faster processing speeds and playing strengths.
It would take MEPHISTO another year before they would seriously challenge the Fidelity world dominance in chess computers.
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