Fidelity Electronics Chess Challenger 10

The best technology for playing chess from year 1979!

The one picture above has the serial number 173357 and was bought in Zürich Switzerland.

There is 3 models available

• A (07/1978) has 16 keys on the keyboard and for 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6, will respond 3. Cc3
• B (11/1978) has 16 keys on the keyboard and for 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6, will respond 3. Cf3
• C (05/1979) has only 12 keys and has an optimized software.

• Model: Chess Challenger 10
• Manufacturer: Fidelity International
• Year: 1979
• Estimated ELO rating: 1200
• Levels of play:10
• Processor: Z80A @4 MHz
• Programmer: Ron C Nelson
• Type: Keypad / Calculator with magnetic pieces
• Dimensions:    33.3 x 21.4 x 2.9 cm.
• Memory:    4 KB ROM, 0.5 KB RAM
• AC – adapter connected directly to computer – non-removable
• price: 450€

At the time, Fidelity was located in Chicago, IL, USA – 5244 W. Diversey Ave
The warranty was 90 days. After 90 days you had to ship the unit plus a $35 money order to them.

Fidelity chess computer

The manual indicated that the Chess Challenger could be upgraded after June 1, 1977 by sending the unit back to them and a money order for US$ 75.00

“…the game analyzes each position and, after considering all possible chess moves, makes a decision which is determined to be the best available move.
The sophisticated program used in this decision-making process is thoroughly tested, and each game manufactured acts like all other games. Thus, CHESS CHALLENGER cannot make a fundamental error.
Initially you may find that CHESS CHALLENGER may appear to be making an illegal move. However, this is highly unlikely.”

Fidelity Chess Challenger 10. Model CCX.  The manual indicates that level 7 is for postal chess (by mail) and the average response time is 24 hours!

Here’s a complete list of the levels of play with the average response time for A or B model, C being provided for reference in bold:

• CL1 – Beginner –          5 Seconds (3 Seconds)
• CL2 – Intermediate –     15 Seconds (10 Seconds)
• CL3 – Experienced  –     35 Seconds (50 Seconds)
• CL4 – Advanced –       1:20 minutes (1:20 minutes)
• CL5 – Superior –       2:20 minutes (3 minutes)
• CL6 – Mate in 2 –        60 minutes (6 minutes)
• CL7 – Postal chess –     24 hours (12 minutes)
• CL8 – Expert –           11 minutes (20 minutes)
• CL9 – Excellent –         6 minutes (70 minutes)
• CL10 – Tournament –       3 minute (15 minutes)

Key description

• RE reset
• switch sound off
• CL clear
• EN enter
• LV level
• DM double move
• PB Problem
• PV Verify

Here is the opening move of the model CC10 B

• 1. e4 e5 2. Sf3 Sc6 3. Lc4 Lc5 4. c3 Sf6 5. d4 exd4 6. cxd4 Lb4+
• 1. e4 e5 2. Sf3 Sc6 3. Lb5 a6 4. La4 Sf6
• 1. e4 c5 2. Sf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Sxd4 Sf6 5. Sc3 g6 6. Le2 Lg7
• 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5
• 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Sc3 Sf6 4. Lg5 Le7 5. e5 Sfd7
• 1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. Sc3 Sf6 4. e5 Sfd7 5. any c5
• 1. d4 d5 2. c4 e6 3. Sc3 Sf6 4. Lg5 Sbd7
• 1. d4 d5 2. c4 c6 3. Sf3

40 Years Of Console Prices, Adjusted For Inflation

Reddit user Auir2blaze has run historical console launch prices through an inflation adjustment calculator (which normally use dollar strength and the cost of basic goods over time) to reveal how expensive, relatively, every major console since the 1970s really was.

I made this graphic showing how much classic consoles would cost in today’s dollars

Review: Getting Started with Apache Maven by Russell Gold

Some time ago I was asked if I would like to write a review about one of the new video courses from Packt Publishing. It was “Getting Started with Apache #Maven” http://bit.ly/1fycmpP by Russell Gold and since I have been using Maven for some years now (since 2007) and did publish some articles myself, I thought it would be nice to help them promote Apache #Maven.

The course is organized in eight chapters, forty videos with a length between two and five minutes, for a total length of two hours. The aim of the course is to provide the shortest path to use effectively Maven

You can download the course as a single zip file. After unpacking the file to a local hard disk you find a user guide, support information, a reference to the code examples and the video files. As you may notice I said “reference to the code examples”. Even if the name of the file “Code Bundle.zip” it contains only a file with the link to the source code on github.

Update Maven pom version on GIT checkout in TeamCity

Here is a solution to the following problems

• Deriving #Maven artifact version from #GIT branch,
• Update pom version on #GIT checkout automatically,
• Add the ability to use Pull request with Apache #Maven.

You have a workflow requirement that require you to have the artifact version of a module externally defined from the current branch in #GIT.

For example

You want to start working on a new feature branch “feature-memory-improvement”, so you branch from master a new branch named feature/feature-memory-improvement

Having unique snapshot is a something you need to share your code using a #Maven repository, so you may want to have into the branch all pom.xml version changed to

<version>FEATURE-MEMORY-IMPROVEMENT-SNAPHOTS</version>

changing all your pom.xml and doing a technical commit  will create merge conflicts when using pull request!

One solution, while not perfect is to do the following:  You can add a separate execution to run a goal which will change the version of the POM automatically in the #Maven reactor. This small script will do it¨

Start Android Development in 5 Minutes

Welcome to Android application development! If you’re new to Android app development, this where you should begin.

Download Android Studio

Android Studio is a new Android development environment based on IntelliJ IDEA. Similar to #Eclipse with the ADT Plugin, Android Studio provides integrated Android developer tools for development and debugging. On top of the capabilities you expect from IntelliJ, Android Studio offers:

• Gradle-based build support.
• Android-specific refactoring and quick fixes.
• Lint tools to catch performance, usability, version compatibility and other problems.
• ProGuard and app-signing capabilities.
• Template-based wizards to create common Android designs and components.
• A rich layout editor that allows you to drag-and-drop UI components, preview layouts on multiple screen configurations, and much more.
• Built-in support for Google Cloud Platform, making it easy to integrate Google Cloud Messaging and App Engine as server-side components.

Download http://developer.android.com/sdk/installing/studio.html

This download includes:

• Android Studio early access preview
• All the Android SDK Tools to design, test, debug, and profile your app
• The latest Android platform to compile your app
• The latest Android system image to run your app in the emulator

Now start Android studio

Clue a command line tool for Apache Lucene search software

Lucene Core  is an open-source search software, provides #Java-based indexing and search technology, as well as spellchecking, hit highlighting and advanced analysis/tokenization capabilities. Luke is a handy development and diagnostic tool, which accesses already existing Lucene indexes and allows you to display and modify their content.

Luke is awesome, but often times it is not feasible to inspect an index on a remote machine using a GUI. That’s where Clue comes in. You can SSH into your production box and inspect your index using your favorite shell

Another important feature for Clue is the ability to interact with other Unix commands via piping, e.g. grep, more etc.

Interactive Mode:

./bin/clue.sh my-idx

Non-interactive Mode:

./bin/clue.sh my-idx command args

Command list:

./bin/clue.sh my-idx help

Agile Product Ownership in a Nutshell

This is basically a 1 day product ownership course compressed into 15 minute animated presentation. There’s obviously more to product ownership than this, so see this is a high level summary.

This gives a really great overview of Agile using simple-to-understand language! I like like this video a lot. Enjoy

Download the complete drawing here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018963/Arti…
Downloadable version of the video here:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1018963/Vide.

Display the short GIT version hash as build identifier in TeamCity

TeamCity is a Continuous integration and build management server from JetBrains.

As the first build step, create a custom script that reads %build.number%, and uses service messages to append the short GIT hash programmatically.

Here’s an example using a bash script pasted right into the TeamCity GUI (Runner type: Command Line, Run: Custom Script):

GIT_HASH=%build.vcs.number% GIT_HASH_SHORT=${GIT_HASH:0:7} echo "##teamcity[buildNumber '#${GIT_HASH_SHORT}']"

How to install your own open source Mind Map tool in html5

Thanks to https://github.com/drichard/mindmaps you can host your own copy of Mind Map like I did at

http://mindmap.waltercedric.com/index.html

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s #JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.

and npm is the package manager for the Node #JavaScript platform.  It puts modules in place so that node can find them, and manages dependency
conflicts intelligently. It is extremely configurable to support a wide variety of use cases. Most commonly, it is used to publish, discover, install, and develop node programs. (https://npmjs.org/)