It was brought to my attention by <b>scruss</b> over on Metafilter (Mastodon) that Peter Jennings, not the newscaster but an oldschool hardwre guy, has a long and great page on the creation of a standalone chess-playing computer for Commodore in its early days, we’re talking between the creation of the KIM-1 and the VIC-20.
It’s a terrific article that covers far more than just Jennings’ experience making the device, covering among other things a pitch to Mattel, meeting with 6502 designer Chuck Peddle, a story of Bobby Fisher, and the unfortunate news that Jack Tramiel, then the boss of Commodore, rarely paid vendors what they were due. Seems about normal for the man.
There’s even a long list of interesting links about the Chessmate at the end. I can’t recommend it enough!
The Commodore CHESSmate (Peter Jennings at benlo.com)
