Early chess programs

FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 11:45 AM
Subject: 
To: Jeff Chronologically Gaming

Forty years ago I reached the "Class A" ranking in chess and many years later the "Expert" rating, which is one category below "Master".   Outside the United States, the "Expert" category is called "Candidate Master."

In the 1980s I was playing a few chess programs on the Timex Sinclair 2068 and the Atari ST.   I entered a contest from a British Sinclair magazine where you had to solve a chess problem to enter the contest.  The prize was the top chess program for the Sinclair Spectrum, so I sent a postcard to England with my solution.  I mostly forgot about it, but two or three months later I received a copy of the chess program from the British magazine with no explanation.  I guess I won the contest.  Unfortunately, I could beat the program.

Fortunately, I had a Spectrum Emulation cartridge.  I used it to play a couple of Spectrum games.  I don't think that Boulder Dash runs on the Timex Sinclair 2068 and I didn't even know that it was available for the Spectrum, which is why I wrote my own version called "Diamond Mike".

I had a couple of chess programs on the Atari ST I could beat.  At the time, the best chess programs were mostly on dedicated chess computers that cost hundreds of dollars.  I wrote a primitive chess program on the Atari ST, but I didn't put much effort into it.  By that point, I was looking to get a real job.

There was a program called Psion Chess on the Atari ST and the Sinclair QL.   I didn't have it, but it would likely have been better than me.  It was comparable to dedicated chess computers.  I met someone who had a Sinclair QL with the program and I was impressed with it.

Years later I got early versions of ChessMaster, like 2000 and 3000, and at the time I ran them on my work computer after hours.  I didn't have an Intel PC yet, but I would get one in the mid 90's, and it cost around $1200 just for a 486-33mhz.

For the last couple of decades, Fritz chess has been the most popular, although the open source Stockfish engine available for free is the strongest.  I use this engine with Fritz 10 to analyze my chess games.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Fwd: My Chess Tactics problems.

FYI

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: John Coffey <john2001plus@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, Jan 7, 2026 at 10:53 AM
Subject: My Chess Tactics problems.
To:

https://www.entertainmentjourney.com/1w.htm

https://www.entertainmentjourney.com/1b.htm

I have mentioned before that I use my performance on the chess problems I created roughly 29 years ago as a proxy for measuring my current tactical strength.  This is usually a good indicator.

I have been accused of simply memorizing the answers and not really challenging my brain.  This is partly true.  The challenge is to see how quickly I can get through them.  My goal is to memorize the patterns rather than the problems themselves, although in reality I am doing some of both.

These problems form the foundation of my pattern recognition.  My goal was always to be able to see simple tactics quickly—if not instantly.  Most one-move problems are instantaneous for me.  This is usually not true for the two- and three-move problems, but I would like it to be.

I have these goals because I play a great deal of speed chess and need to recognize tactical patterns very quickly.

After Christmas, I suddenly started doing worse on these problems.  This led me to believe I was in a slump.  There could be a variety of reasons for this, but my concern is that my skill might deteriorate as I get older.

At least for the moment, I seem to have worked my way out of the slump.  In chess, hard work has always paid off for me, and I love the game so much that I enjoy the effort.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

20 Essential Science Fiction Books

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RavzF4Itlh0

I used to read a ton up to the 1990s, then it seemed like I got too busy.

I've read 7 of the 20 books...

War of the Worlds.

Foundation (trilogy)

Stranger in a Strange Land (I've read most of Robert Heinlein)

Dune (I read all the sequels in the 1970s.)

The Mote in God's Eye

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and sequels)

Hyperion (and sequel)

He does not include the "I Robot" novels.  Asimov would eventually merge these into his Foundation novels.

Lately I have been listening to a ton of Star Wars audiobooks.

Humidifiers: Simpler is better?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHeehYYgl28

During the cold weather, I have trouble with dry skin, so I asked my doctor if I should get a humidifier.   He thought that it would be a good idea, and he said that he uses one.

Speaking of "swamp coolers", they are very popular in Utah where the climate is very dry.  My house came with one, and it did a very poor job of cooling my home.  So I had an AC system installed.

Waiting in Line for Star Wars

@john2001plus
0 minutes ago
That wasn't my grandparents waiting in line to watch Star Wars. That was me.

You Should Code in Game Boy Assembly

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SHaveLOt0M&lc=UgxyCe6jOiZMGWIiOrt4AaABAg.APw4PbvXIM9APw5MaHKUZr

Highlighted reply

@systemoflevers
2 minutes ago
I have been wondering if all the game boy programming then was in assembly or if anyone was using something like C




@john2001plus
0 seconds ago
 @systemoflevers  There were no C compilers.   I'm not sure how optimal C code would be.   It is a slow processor that mostly does 8-bit math.  There is some limited 16-bit math, but you don't want to use 16-bits if you only need 8.  To have optimal code you need to be aware of your register usage and plan things out.  For most things it might not matter, but you also don't want to waste limited cartridge space with unnecessary code.

My first week I didn't have the development system until Friday.  I spent my first four days reading manuals.  On Friday I wrote code to calculate a car skidding around a curve.  It might have been 1 or 2 lines of C code, but it took 90 lines of assembly and most of the day to write.

Fwd: The most beautiful idea in physics

FYI.

---------- Forwarded message ---------

On Sun, Nov 23, 2025 at 8:17 PM Grant wrote:

Incredible nature is one reason I believe in God.  As stated in the interview, "ït all comes together"  Physics is beautiful. 

---------- Forwarded message ---------

From: John Coffey

To: Grant

Grant,

I have a similar viewpoint.  I am not an atheist.  I like pantheism, but I am more of an agnostic.

I tend to believe in a generic concept of God, but this presents philosophical questions that I am not comfortable with.  Those would be, "Who made God?" and "Why is there something instead of nothing?"   My point is that we believe that all events have a cause, so every event must have had another event that preceded it.  Does this go back in time forever?   Every possible answer I can come up with makes no sense.  Either there was a first event or there wasn't.  If there was a first event, what caused it?

If we believe that God is eternal going in both time directions, then we might as well believe in a universe that is eternal in both time directions.  Believing in God might be wishful thinking.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

In loving memory

Seven years ago I wrote this on Facebook...

"I should have smiled, but I was fiddling with the camera to take a selfie.
We had a nice meal at the Sirloin Stockade. I ate too much turkey. 🙂"

Infected

Although my forehead scanner never showed a fever, my temperature at the Doctor's office was 100.  My normal is 97 and change.

I still feel sick.   For now I don't feel as bad as the last two days.  Two days ago I had intense shivering.

My doctor thinks that I am fighting a viral infection.  Everybody tells me, "there is stuff going around."   People have told me that either they or a family member have been sick.

I didn't trust the expired COVID tests that I used two days ago.  One of the tests initially showed a solid color on the line that shows that you are infected, but then the line became clear.  This is odd, and in my mind made the test invalid.  This created some confusion on my part as to whether or not I have COVID.

Yesterday I bought a new COVID test that also tests for two kinds of flu.  The results were negative for COVID and the flu.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Chess for Babies?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWqKWyiCmyg&t=77s

I doubt that babies are capable of abstract thinking.  (BTW, the games on this video are really interesting.)

I remember that at a young age, maybe 9 or 10, I was fascinated with any kind of grid, like a tiled surface.  I would imagine a ball traveling along a diagonal and bouncing off an edge at a right angle and continuing on bouncing off other edges.  This was long before ball and paddle video games were invented that did essentially the same thing.  

My point is that humans have a natural fascination with geometric patterns and chess is a geometric game.

Free Brown County vacation?

I received a card in the mail offering a free hotel stay in Brown County along with $150 in cash. The fine print said it was a promotional offer, but I wasn't sure what the scam was.  Offers like this are sometimes tied to timeshare pitches, or they might require you to sign up for a service that charges you every month.

In any case, nobody is going to give you $150 in cash without a major catch.  I threw the card away.

Lately, I've been thinking, "There's always a catch."  I don't just mean promotional offers — it seems to me that most things in life come with hidden downsides. Maybe I'm being pessimistic, but it feels like that's true more often than not.  (For example, several things I've bought have broken within a year or two.)

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Keeping Score on the NES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WahER4-nl08

@john2001plus
8 minutes ago (edited)
It has been 25 years since I wrote video games, but I never bothered with BCD numbers.  I was aware that they existed, but the whole time that I was doing machine code from 1976 to 2000, I never bothered to learn how they worked.  I assumed that they were a leftover from when 4-bit processors were doing math on calculators.

How then did I display scores?  I converted binary numbers to decimal digits.   I didn't know about the Double Dabble algorithm.  The more complicated way to do it involves a bunch of compares and maybe some division.

Problems with Internet Access after Mac OS Update

My iMac is dual-boot, meaning it can start up in either macOS or Windows 10. I mostly use the now-outdated Windows 10, but yesterday I switched to macOS to learn app programming. While using macOS, I was prompted to upgrade to the latest version of the operating system. I accepted the upgrade, which took about an hour. Everything worked fine afterward, both in macOS and when I switched back to Windows 10.

However, after leaving my computer in "sleep" mode overnight, I found in the morning that Windows 10 could no longer access the Internet. My other computer and my phone could connect without any problem.

I tried the obvious fixes — rebooting the gateway (router) and restarting the computer a couple of times — but nothing worked. When I switched to macOS, it connected to the Internet just fine. Then I set up a hotspot on my phone, and Windows 10 was able to access the Internet through that, which told me it wasn't a hardware issue and likely not a problem with the gateway.

I suspected that upgrading macOS might have caused the Boot Camp drivers used by Windows to become outdated. So, in macOS, I formatted a flash drive and used Boot Camp Assistant to copy the latest drivers onto it. Then I rebooted into Windows and reinstalled the drivers.

Initially, that didn't seem to help. I was about to call Comcast technical support, but I decided to reboot the gateway one more time. For a few seconds after restarting it, the Internet still didn't work — and then suddenly, Windows connected.

Apparently, the fix was a combination of updating the Boot Camp drivers and rebooting the gateway.

“If you encounter a bear...”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q83uIwfsA8k

I'm not going hiking anywhere a bear might decide to have me for lunch.

population of utah

https://www.google.com/search?q=population+of+utah

When I moved to Utah in 1993, the population was between 1.8 and 1.9 million.  When I left Utah in 2015, it was 2.75 million.

Watch "The Earthquake Bed That Turns Into a Life-Saving Shelter"

On Sat, Aug 30, 2025 at 11:56 AM Albert wrote:

Now, if only the rescuers knew you are inside a metal coffin buried in the building debris. Then again the building may catch fire and you will literally be baked upon being discovered. It's a unique idea, possibly life saving, except for the "what ifs" of earthquakes.

https://youtube.com/shorts/aUiL70SDgVI?si=0JesJnHa1wVrIPv4

The only earthquake I experienced was around 1987 in southern Indiana. It was mild, and earthquakes aren't a major risk in Indiana.

In Utah, there were reports of mild tremors, but none that affected me. The Wasatch mountain range follows a fault line that experts predict could cause a major earthquake someday.

I'm more concerned about tornadoes.  We live in Tornado Alley.  After moving to New Whiteland, Indiana, I saw what looked like a funnel cloud in Greenwood, and then the news reported a tornado hitting Greenwood.  Year later, after I moved to Columbus, Whiteland was hit by a tornado.

Bartholomew County, where I live now, had three tornado warnings this spring, though none of them hit the city. About three years ago, a tornado-related windstorm knocked down trees all over the city, including trees across the street from me.  At the time, I thought my house was being hit by a tornado, but the actual funnel touched down on the west side of the county.

My sister's house was hit by a tornado.

When I was living in Columbus in 1974, a tornado struck the city and caused moderate damage. It destroyed one of my favorite restaurants. I was 14 years old at the time.

In the late 1980s, while living in Scott County, Indiana, I was relatively close to a tornado that hit Austin.

Back in 1999, there was a very rare summer tornado that struck downtown Salt Lake City. I lived near downtown, but I worked farther away in Sandy, Utah, where the storm only brought hail.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_Salt_Lake_City_tornado

John Coffey - The Doom Wiki at DoomWiki.org

https://doomwiki.org/wiki/John_Coffey

Obituary for Paul A. Belding

https://www.sawyerfuneralservice.com/obituary/Paul-Belding

John Coffey #32

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm13954741/?ref_=ttfc_fcr_cr

My vision "problem"

For the past 4 to 5 days, my vision has been temporarily going dark at least five times a day, particularly in my good eye—the one that was operated on.

These episodes are usually triggered by minor exertion or even by coughing, and they last between 2 to 7 seconds. It was especially frightening when it happened while I was driving—once on US 50 and another time on I-65.

The symptoms resemble postural hypotension, which occurs when blood momentarily drains from the head due to standing up quickly or other exertion. I've experienced this occasionally since I was a teenager.

Today, I saw my optometrist to rule out retinal detachment, a potentially serious complication of cataract surgery. Fortunately, he said my eye looks healthy.

I also visited my primary care doctor because I felt some difficulty breathing. He listened to my lungs and ordered blood tests. He gave me samples of an expensive asthma inhaler, which may help, because I was first diagnosed with asthma two decades ago while living in Salt Lake City.

I believe I can improve my health by losing weight, and I'm actively working on that.

Playing DOOM on the PC

I had not played DOOM for at least 15 years.  Playing it again makes me happy.  This is partly because of nostalgia, but I think that the game play is the best.

Playing on the Ultra Violent difficulty level feels a bit stressful.  This used to be no problem, but I struggle to get through the levels.  The game has "jump scares" where monsters will suddenly ambush you.

The resolution of DOOM is only 320x200.  This wasn't much of an issue back in 1993, where standard CRT monitors were typically 640x480.  But playing on a modern screen makes the game look chunky.  This is similar to my vision before my recent cataract surgery.  BTW, the SNES and Gameboy Advance versions ran at half this resolution, making the game look even more blurry.

There are alternate downloadable DOOM engines that support higher resolution and maybe more detailed graphics.

OG Doom Tested On High-End 1993 PC - How Well Did It Actually Run?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-cpITc1Rrlw

@john2001plus
My first Intel computer was a 486 33 MHz in 1995.  It cost $1200, and I played Doom on it.  At the time, I didn't notice any problem with performance.  I would upgrade the processor a step at a time to 66 MHz and later 100 MHz.  I needed 66 MHz to play Descent, which was more demanding.

The recent Doom news has caused me to click on Doom videos.  (Randy Linden is coming out with a new version of SNES Doom, and I briefly worked with him on the original SNES Doom released in 1995.)  The more I click on Doom videos, the more Doom videos YouTube recommends to me.

This has prompted me to play Doom again.  My current computer is an i7-10700K.  I was a Doom fanatic back in 1995, and I am surprised at how fun it is to play the game again.

My role on the SNES port of Doom

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qxWJFBVwlnc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5PknJvplKg&t=1823s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSlmVbAM_kA&t=4473s

@john2001plus
1 year ago 
1:14:31 I am grateful that Randy keeps bringing up my name in these interviews. My role was minor since I worked on many projects. I don't specifically remember editing levels, but it was so long ago that I don't recall. I know that we were trying to reduce the size of the game to fit on a cartridge. I believe that I was involved in massaging the data, which is something I did on multiple games, especially Dirt Trax FX.

My Vision Two Days After Cataract Surgery

Two days ago I had cataract surgery on my good eye. 

I went for a short drive. They said I could drive as soon as I was comfortable driving. I tested my vision by trying to read a store sign. My vision is not perfect, but maybe I'm seeing 20:30 or 20:40. That's about what I'm used to.  Maybe this will get better, or maybe it won't.  Maybe glasses can improve my vision further.

Due to the antibiotics they injected, in 29 hours I went from almost blind in that eye to seeing clearly.  The first day I could barely see anything.

Now that I'm no longer as nearsighted, my up-close vision is terrible.  They are making me wait three weeks to get a prescription for reading glasses.

I am going to get some cheap store reading glasses to get by.

--

Best wishes,

John Coffey

http://www.entertainmentjourney.com

Vision

  My vision has been improving throughout the day.

I just walked outside and was impressed by how clearly I could see distant objects. My main issue now is that I can't see up close very well. Before the surgery, I had the opposite problem—I was about 7 diopters nearsighted. Now, I may have shifted to being slightly farsighted.

I need reading glasses, but my optometrist wants to wait three weeks before prescribing them.  

How many computers do we own?

https://interestingcompute.blogspot.com/2025/06/computers.html

From Facebook March 24, 2020

I was born at a time that made my life a transition between the old and the new. The people who came before me went through the Great Depression, World War II, and the Korean war. The technology of the 1960s was hardly distinguishable from the 1950s. The cars were practically the same. I didn't get a color television until the mid-1970s. High tech was a transistor radio.

In the early to mid-1970's I was very interested in electronics because at the time that was about as high tech as you could get. However, when the most primitive computers imaginable started to emerge around 1975, I became immediately hooked because I could see that this is where the future was headed.

John Coffey

NES Games Were Written in Assembly

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kFjSxwijItU

@john2001plus
0 seconds ago
I wrote games in Assembly for the SNES, Gameboy Color, Atari ST, and Timex Sinclair 2068.

10 Year Old Wins Utah Speed Chess Championship

Note the date:

https://chessplayeratlarge.blogspot.com/2009/02/10-year-old-wins-utah-speed-chess.html

The press always gets details wrong and reported this as a ten year old winning the state championship.

When Kayden was 8, I was only scoring about 50% against him.  He looked so small, but was playing very well.  My overall results against him went quickly downhill from there.  However, when he was 12 and almost a master, I won 1 out of 2 against him in a subsequent speed chess championship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kayden_Troff

Sugar Consumption, Date format

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xHXtGsKq5JU

The International ISO Standard for dates is YYYY-MM-DD.  I have been using this format for at least 15 years.  

In the computer world, this is called "Big Endian", where the largest value numbers come first.  Many computer processors use this format for numbers, although Intel and Intel-compatible processors use "Little Endian", where the least significant part of the number comes first.  "Big Endian" has a small advantage because it is easier to sort records using this format.