[Coco] chess

[Patrick Ulland]

TRIGGER ALERT - kind of an ad.

Forget modems, here is a new challenge. Most CoCos with MPI (see 
**below) can make real ethernet connections using a CoCoIO ($50us) and 
wired connection to your cable router. Some old fashioned port 
forwarding on said router allows CoCo to connect directly over a mile or 
13,000. No local men in the middle.

The second compelling reason to do this is the Wiznet chip’s onboard 
buffer. It is very easy for anything (other CoCo, web/game server, 
chatbotAI) to drop 1 frame of ethernet to the card at 0 cost to the CoCo 
CPU. Repeatedly. If your game state can be saved in <1500 bytes, free 
shipping!

There are 4 sockets(channels). Assume 1 for the system (dhcp, dns…) and 
1 for a PTBNL That leaves two – a shared game state, and a command/chat 
channel. Every client can compare the other player’s command string to 
the rules and the claimed resulting game state (serverless) or just work 
from a state some game server provides. If a server supplies game state 
it’s simply there on chip ‘ahead’ of the local CoCo, which peeks or 
pokes the bytes it needs as it needs them.

My github* includes ‘5100HTTP.ASC’, a DECB program using entirely manual 
network setup (local IP, host IP, gateway, everything) to dump the raw 
source of a web page on screen. Under OS9, an early text browser ‘www’ 
has been up for a while, the ‘V2’ branch is a dead end but leads to the 
real news, a newer MultiVue version(V3) using Henry's*  network 
utilities (dhcp,dns…wget) to extend  OS9, Suddenly Basic09 a viable way 
for mere mortals to do network things.

  -ricku

  * links to everyones github & more thoughts 
https://computerconect.com/blogs/news

** WARNING: Protector protected CoCo do not like our product yet. This 
includes 2Meg BoysonTech DAT board. News soon.


On 7/14/2023 12:56 PM, Mike Delyea via Coco wrote:
> I woke up in the middle of the night last night and out of the blue I had a
> thought.  Why didn't anybody write a coco program to play chess over the
> modem? Since it would be 2 humans playing it could even be written in
> BASIC.  You could use a free terminal program (from one of the magazines -
> can't remember which one) to make the connection and write a small file to
> each machine after a successful move.  Maybe such a thing exists and I just
> never saw it.
>