Schaetzle + Bsteh : 6502 (chess) accelerators from the 80's

[BigEd]

Came across these in a chess machine context, in a mostly German-language wiki

DC65 - 12.5MHz (or 10MHz?) 6502 emulator Apple ][ card from 1984, maybe DM3000 (follow link for advertisement text)

TK20 - 18MHz 6502 emulator (bitslice? 100 chips?) box from 1987, connected by umbilical to the cpu socket of a 6502-based chess machine, DM1600

Inventors were Heinz Schaetzle and Herbert Bsteh, said to be patented but I can't find the patent.

At least the TK20 would seem to be an in-circuit emulator which includes enough RAM to upload and emulate the whole system, which presumably stays off the bus while computing and slows down to perform I/O on the mother system.

Edit: Heinz, not Norbert.

[65f02]

As a side effect of our 65F02 accelerator project, it seems that my chess-computer-savvy friend Roland and I will get our hands on a Schaetzle & Bsteh TK20 for a while. (On loan, to have a loong, curious look and ideally help to make it operational again.)

I am really curious what technology is inside, and will report here! Conceptually, it is said to be quite close to the 65F02 -- fast RAM on board to upload the host computer's ROM upon each startup.

[BigEd]

That's excellent - hope you get a chance to get some nice clear photos of the board(s)!

[65f02]

Will do!

To get an idea what to expect, I Googled for photos. Nothing to be found on the insides of the TK20, and while your link to the DC65 brings up a relevant discussion thread, that unfortunately has a broken link to the advert. But I found the advert and some photos of the DC65:

http://www.ralf-kiefer.de/A2/DC65/DC65_Inserat.png
http://www.ralf-kiefer.de/A2/DC65/DC65_Add_BS_sm.JPG
http://www.ralf-kiefer.de/A2/DC65/DC65_Base_BS_sm.JPG
http://www.ralf-kiefer.de/A2/DC65/6502- ... -oben.jpeg

Lots of 74Fxx TTL, fast PROMs, fast RAM, and plenty of PALs... Let's hope the PALs or PROMs are not what is acting up in the TK20; retrieving any lost program/configuration data would be a long shot. I'll bank on my "It's probably something mechanical" troubleshooting mantra...

[RalfK]

65f02 wrote:

To get an idea what to expect, I Googled for photos.

You wouldn't have "binged" too much This board is mine, the web site too.

My question until now is if this is the last and only board?