Sargon (chess)
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Sargon (or SARGON) is a line of chess-playing software for personal computers.
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[edit] History
[edit] Origin
The original SARGON was written by Dan and Kathe Spracklen in a Z80-based computer called Wavemate Jupiter III [1] using assembly language through TDL Macro Assembler.
The name "Sargon" was taken from either of the historical kings Sargon of Akkad (the first king to use his empire to try to conquer the known world) or Sargon of Assyria. (Ironically, neither ruler would have been able to play chess since it was not invented until long after their reigns.) The name was originally written entirely in capitals since early computer operating systems such as CP/M did not support lower-case text (nor files with names more than six letters long, as with ADVENT).
[edit] Introduction
SARGON was introduced at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, where it won the first computer chess tournament held strictly for microcomputers. This success encouraged the authors to seek financial income by selling the program directly to customers. Since magnetic media wasn't still widely available, the authors placed an ad at Byte Magazine and mailed photocopied listings that would work in any Z80-based microcomputer [1]. Later they were contacted by Hayden Book Company and a book was published [2].
[edit] Commercialization through electronic media
When magnetic media publishing became widely available, the Spracklens ported Sargon for the TRS-80, altering only graphics. A complete rewrite was necessary later for the Apple II port, made by Kathleen's brother Gary Shannon. Both were published by Hayden Software.
[edit] Sequels
The Spracklens made some significant improvements on the original program [1] and released Sargon II. This version was ported to a variety of personal computers popular in the early 1980s [3]. The game engine featured multiple levels of lookahead to make it more accessible to beginning chess players - even though chess programs of the time could not defeat a chess master, they were more than a match for most amateur players.
Sargon III was a complete rewrite from the scratch. Instead of an exchange evaluator, this version used a capture search algorithm. Also included was a Chess opening repertoire. This third version was written originally for the 6502 assembler and was commercially published by Hayden Software in 1983. Some years later the couple was contacted by Apple and after a port for 68000 assembly, Sargon III came out to be the first 3rd party executable software for the Macintosh [1].
After the demise of Hayden Software, later chess programs were also released under the name Sargon, including Sargon IV (Spinnaker Software), Sargon V (Activision) and a CD-i title simply named Sargon Chess.
The Spracklens also ported Sargon 2.5 to a dedicated unit, Applied Concepts' Modular Game System. The Spracklens concurrently wrote the engines for the dedicated chess computers produced by Fidelity Electronics, which won the first four World Microcomputer Chess Championships.
[edit] References
- ^ a b c d Hendrie, Gardner. "Oral History of Kathe and Dan Spracklen", Computer History Museum, 2005-03-02. Retrieved on February 11, 2007.
- ^ Spracklen, Dan; Kathe Spracklen (1978-11-01). Sargon: A Computer Chess Program. Hayden Book Company. ISBN 0-8104-5155-7.
- ^ It was even ported to the 6809 variety of the FLEX operating system by Brian N. Baily and Charles B. Blish in August of 1981, and that port may still be found within this 6809 FLEX emulation
