Kriegspiel and other chess variants

[wintdoan]

@Smythe Dakota

@tmagchesspgh

My bad about the chip. It is over 30 years since I last saw a TRS-80 Model III in use. …

Upon further review (of my fading memory), I believe that the Z-80 chip and the later 8086 chip (and its 8-bit cousin, the 8088) were both extensions, in different directions, of the old 8080 chip, which was in turn an extension of the even older 8008. (Or something like that.) All of those came from Intel, except for the Z-80 which came from competitor Zilog. I don’t believe there were ever any “TRS-80 clones”, although there were some Z-80 clones (chips). Programmers of assembly language loved the Z-80 because of its extra registers and expanded instruction set.

Bill Smythe

The Z-80 was really an improved 8080, but still 8 bits. The 8086 was 16 bit, and the 8088 was the same 16 bit but an 8 bit bus. (I believe Ford was the biggest buyer of the 8086, as IBM adopted the 8088). The Z-80 dominated the 8080 in the early microcomputer world, but Zilog’s Z-8000 never got adopted in any significant way. It was probably a much better processor than the 8086, but was too different and IBM went for the more compatible processor as it wanted to get the PC up and going quickly.

[seki]

Storage of data was on cassettes that would operate with a normal cassette recorder.

Also known as sloppy drives.