Compatible emulators

Synopsis

Origin
The original SARGON was written by Dan and Kathleen 'Kathe' Spracklen on a Z80-based computer called Wavemate Jupiter III[1] using assembly language via TDL Macro Assembler. The name was originally written in all capitals because early computer operating systems such as CP/M did not support lowercase file names. Introduction
SARGON was introduced at the 1978 West Coast Computer Faire, where it won the first computer chess tournament held solely for microcomputers, with a score of 5-0. This success encouraged the authors to seek financial income by selling the program directly to customers. Since magnetic media was not widely available at the time, the authors placed an ad in Byte Magazine and mailed photocopied $15 listings that would work on any Z80-based microcomputer.[1] The availability of the source code allowed porting to other machines. For example, the March-April 1979 issue of Recreational Computing described a project that converted Sargon to an 8080 program using macros. Later, the Spracklens were contacted by Hayden Books and a book was published.[4]

Marketing via electronic media
When publishing on magnetic media became widely available, a Navy petty officer, Paul Lohnes, ported Sargon to the TRS-80, modifying both the graphics, input, and maintenance routines, leaving the Spracklen's chess-playing algorithm intact. Paul consulted with the Spracklens, both living in San Diego at the time, to make the TRS-80 version an instant success with the help of Hayden Book's newly created software division: Hayden Software. Paul was not involved in further improvements to the TRS-80 version due to his reassignment to maritime duty shortly after signing the deal with Hayden Software. In the early 1980s, SARGON CHESS was ported to several earlier microcomputers, namely NASCOM (by Bits & PCs, 1981), Exidy Sorcerer, Sharp MZ 80K[5] and many others. A complete rewrite was later required for the Apple II port, carried out by Kathleen's brother, Gary Shannon. Both were published by Hayden Software. Aftereffects
The Spracklens made significant improvements to the original program[1] and released Sargon II. In 1978, he placed third in the ninth North American Computer Chess Championship despite being ranked ninth out of 12 entries. Sargon finished only behind Belle and Chess 4.7 and defeated AWIT, running on a $5 million Amdahl mainframe, wowing the audience. That year, they published a series of articles in BYTE on computer chess programming,[2][7] stating "we think it would be nice if everyone didn't have to reinvent the wheel". [6]

Sargon II was ported to a variety of popular home computers in the early 1980s.[8] The game engine featured several levels of anticipation to make it more accessible to beginning chess players. BYTE in 1980 estimated that Sargon II had a rating of 1500 at the tournament's highest difficulty level and speculated that it was the best chess program on sale, including dedicated devices. Sargon 2.5, sold as a ROM module for the Chafitz Modular Gaming System, was identical to Sargon II but incorporated reflection. He received a score of 1641 at the Paul Masson tournament in June–July 1979 and 1736 at the San Jose City College Open in January 1980. Sargon 3.0 finished in seventh place at the North American Computer Chess Championship in October 1979. The competition had improved, but 3.0 drew against Cray Blitz and easily beat Mychess, its main microcomputer rival. In December 3.0 easily won the second microcomputer championship in London.[3]

In 1980, the Spracklens' Reversi game finished in first place at a computer tournament at Northwestern University, and in 1981, it finished in third place at the Open Othello tournament in Santa Cruz. Sargon III was a complete rewrite from scratch. Instead of an exchange evaluator, this version used a capture search algorithm. A chess opening repertoire was also included. This third version was originally written for the 6502 assembler and was released commercially by Hayden Software in 1983. Apple contacted the Spracklens and, after a port for the 68000 assembler, Sargon III was the first third-party executable software for the Macintosh.[1]

After Hayden Software's demise, later chess programs were also released under the Sargon name, including Sargon IV (Spinnaker Software), Sargon V (Activision), and a CD-i title simply named Sargon Chess. The Spracklens simultaneously wrote the engines for the dedicated chess computers produced by Fidelity Electronics, which won the first four World Microcomputer Chess Championships.

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