Msg: 5450 *Conference*

10-02-94 09:54:38

From: RICHARD HANSON

To : TOM JONES

Subj: REPLY TO MSG #5449 (ROMULUS CHESS)

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You've got a Romulus Chess, too, Tom.  I'm looking at 5 on the shelf right
now--that I know of.  They've been in that position for over a year.  I'll
still have 3 or so left.  You are certinly welcome to one, no charge.  I've
already made a note on your order form.  Thanks for taking one off my hands.

As far as I know, the chess program requires almost the entire Model 200 24K
RAM for use.  It's a big program--from our point of view--but I hear it plays a
pretty mean game.  I played it before but can't remember just how mean, mean
is.  I'll leave that up to you to discover.

I believe it's all in BASIC--again, it's been awhile.  It's a tape-based
program but awhile back I was toying with the idea of coping it to disk.  My
last thought on the subject was to use a TS-DOS ROM with the DOS ON feature to
start the program, <ctrl> <break> the program to the BASIC OK prompt, then
SAVE"0:chess.ba" to disk.  I never actually did the process but can't, at this
time, see why it won't work.  Since TS-DOS on ROM runs from the ROM address
space .vs running in RAM, both chess and TS-DOS could co-exist without space
limitation problems.  Another idea was to load it into a Model 100/102 and do
the same thing.  As long as I didn't attempt to run the program it would be
just fine--and a 100/102 has 32K RAM.

My crazy idea at the time was to place all of the old Radio Shack programs, and
their docs, online for all to access ... yet, another extreemly time consuming
project for the elite onliners. (grin)

-Rick-