Mephisto Phoenix chess computer

In 14 days a new dedicated chess computer by Mephisto comes on the market .
Its called Mephisto Phoenix.

Mephisto is the company that began in 1980 with mephisto 1.


I remember how i bought the first dedicated chess computer from Mephisto.
I was very young and had not much money but i bought the mephisto machine.

1982 Mephisto 2 came on the market.
1983 Mephisto 3 came on the market.


And these Nitsche/Henne machines were really a breakthrough.

Since mephisto Phoenix uses a Rasberry Pi and UCI format for engines there is plenty of possibilities.

E.g. it seems it will be the first dedicated chess computer coming with 5 pieces endgame tablebases in the next update.
Many engines can qualify for the machine.

40 years after i bought my first dedicated chess computer,
another Mephisto comes on the market and will be a succes IMO.

Mclane wrote:

In 14 days a new dedicated chess computer by Mephisto comes on the market .
Its called Mephisto Phoenix.

Mephisto is the company that began in 1980 with mephisto 1.


I remember how i bought the first dedicated chess computer from Mephisto.
I was very young and had not much money but i bought the mephisto machine.

1982 Mephisto 2 came on the market.
1983 Mephisto 3 came on the market.


And these Nitsche/Henne machines were really a breakthrough.

My first dedicaded computer in the same year was the weak Fidelity Mini Sensory Chess. But the last was the rock solid Mephisto Roma 68000 bought after that my boss organized the WMCC 87 under the Vittoriano at Venice Square (Piazza Venezia) in Rome :-)

Yes the roma had a lot of knowledge about pawns etc.
Dallas was a very good blitz engine. But roma was Slow. Richard put much knowledge into the thing, iam sure ossi weiner adviced to do so.

Alex-Microsmeta wrote:

My first dedicated computer in the same year was the weak Fidelity Mini Sensory Chess.

Snap!

It wasn't weak by my standards, and from playing it I learned a valuable skill - to push pawns!

I didn't know until decades later that it ran a Ron Nelson program (link) - I had always assumed it was the Spracklens.

Here is my new mephisto Phoenix running Mephisto Glasgow by Thomas Nitsche and Elmar Henne as Emulation

As you can see it gives a huge display for showing information such as evals, depths, main-line.

I like the way all four corners of the G4 square are lit!

It is a very nice set Thorsten. I think I love the big chessboard the most of it but that is just me, the computer is very nice too. Mephisto Glasgow can run at 65 times the original speed they say what Elo would that be

On the bottom my old mephisto II from 1982.
On top you see Mephisto Phoenix from 2022.
40 years of development between these two dedicated chess computers.
The new machine has no real buttons but the big touch display can generate all kinds of „buttons“.

Mephisto II had a cool and for the time big LCD display.

here a game of Mephisto III S Glasgow on the new Mephisto Phoenix dedicated chess computer.
Glasgow runs as Emulation in full speed.

You also get many Ed Schroeder emulation engines such as Gideon, MM4/5/Nigel Short and Polgar.

Also native UCI engines such as the new shredder 13.5 with neural net and Hiarcs14.2, Komodo and Stockfish.

One good feature is that you can reduce the engines speed. E.g. run Hiarcs14.2 with only 1% speed.
Or give precise ELO numbers to limit its playing strength. E.g. giving Hiarcs14.2 2100 ELO.
and it will NOT compute immediality without thinking, that would spoil the complete fun.
no it computes like a normal human beeing.

But here Thomas Nitsche and Elmar Hennes Mephisto IIIS Glasgow Phoenix
against my Fidelity Elite A/S with v6 hardware (68020) and the spracklen engine:

[Event "40/120 mephisto_phoenix"]
[Site "SCW"]
[Date "2022.12.19"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Mephisto IIIS Glasgow Phoenix"]
[Black "Fidelity Elite A/S v6"]
[ECO "A21"]
[Result "1-0"]

1. c4 e5 2. Nc3 Nc6 3. Nf3 d6 4. d4 {"} Bg4 5. d5 Nce7
6. e4 Ng6 7. Be3 Nh4 {"} 8. Rg1 Nxf3+ 9. gxf3 Bd7 10. Qb3
b6 11. O-O-O c6 12. dxc6 Bxc6 13. Nb5 g6 14. c5 bxc5
15. Bxc5 Rc8 16. Qc3 Bd7 17. Nxd6+ Bxd6 18. Rxd6 Qe7
19. Rd5 f6 20. Ba6 Rxc5 21. Rxc5 Qe6 22. Bc8 Ne7 23. Bxd7+
Kxd7 24. Rc7+ Ke8 25. Rd1 Kf7 26. Rdd7 Re8 27. Rxa7 h6
28. Qc5 f5 29. exf5 gxf5 30. Rd5 Qf6 31. Rxe5 Qh4 32. Qd5+
Kg6 33. Qe6+ Qf6 1-0

So this machine offers really big screens for computerchess. An exclusive shredder 13. NNUE version, the first time Hiarcs is included in a dedicated chess computer, and also Komodo in a dedicated chess computer.

I still think computerchess history would have changed if eric winkler would have decided to buy hiarcs from mark Uniacke. At the championship in munich hiarcs got the title amateur champion with his sun sparc version. And the saitek sparc was running a Spracklen engine, the successor of the 68000 Fidelity software, transferred to the sparc cpu. IMO hiarcs on the same module would have scored better , they only had to buy a license and exchange the eproms.

Saitek would have had a stronger engine with a championship title in 1993.

The big greek on Rebel 5.0 on Phoenix in max speed:

And vs. Polgar on Phoenix: