Regarding Excalibur/Krypton chess computers having the same program: Excalibur Legend II is obviously a clone of Sphinx Legend II, Avenger is a clone of Krypon Comet.

Igor, Ivan, Mirage, are Ron Nelson programs, not by Gyula Horváth. I know there was speculation about it in the past, but I thought that was cleared up after Ron Nelson posted on a forum and told about his work at Fidelity and Excalibur. In the first year or two at Excalibur, their chess computers were manufactured in Eric White's factory, so from the outside they look similar to CXG/Krypton ones. Even the LCD is the same. The chess program is different.

If there still is/was any doubt (like thinking that maybe Ron Nelson subcontracted parts of the program), now that there are ROM dumps available, people that want to check more thoroughly can do so by comparing/examining the files or parsing them through a disassembler or MAME's debugger.

Hi Hap,

It is funny how we always think the worst and react. If you play the chess programs you would know that their roots are very similar. Let's not rehash it all. If you read the history in Hiarcs you will know I was the biggest critic and had long battles with Ron Nelson, until I finally realized he was right. I was the one who first changed all reference to the name Ron Nelson on my Website and received a lot of critique for it in private as well. There is no program in the world (forget about chess, I am talking program) which does not have roots from somewhere. Programmers add ideas, remove them, change them, improve them... battle with hardware restrictions and so on, which ultimately results in a creation which is theirs. That applies to Ron Nelson and everyone else as well.

Best regards
Nick