Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Greetings :)

After performing surgery on my Novag Star Opal I currently have it running perfectly at 12 Mhz (I have changed the crystal only).

My understanding is that the 6301Y processor has been available in dedicated machines up to 16 Mhz (Novag Beluga, etc). I have also read that Robert managed to get an 8 Mhz Mephisto 6301Y machine up to 16 Mhz.

I currently have a 16 Mhz crystal on order, but was wondering if there might be possible issues with the standard battery supply? (Star Opal uses 4 x AAA).

I have noticed that all 16 Mhz 6301Y based machines seem to use 6 x AA batteries, so I am wondering if this is because they require a higher voltage than for clock speeds of 12 Mhz or below?

And a question specifically to Robert: With your Mephisto 16 Mhz mod, did you make any changes to the battery supply and / or voltage regulation circuitary, or did you leave it alone?

Anyway, I am hoping my turbocharged Opal will be sufficiently strong to defeat Saitek Express 16K / Cavalier in a match :)

Currently, in a 20 game slow tournament match, Express 16K defeated Star Opal 8 Mhz 11 to 9. Perhaps the 16 Mhz clock speed will be enough to even the score or secure victory!

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Hi Jonathan,

No, there was no change; i prefer to use adaptors, so i can't tell, if (resp. how much) the power consumption is higher, sorry!


best regards,
Robert

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the reply. It was good that your experiment succeeded, because the Mephisto you modified is only powered by 4 x 1.5 cells.

Given that you did not change anything else in your modification, I soldered in the 16 Mhz crystal this afternoon. And the little Star Opal chirped up perfectly, albeit with a rather squeeky voice :D

So it seems to be working perfectly and I have verified it is now making moves exactly twice as fast as the original Star Opal on the corresponding fixed time and fixed depth levels.

This is great news, since this program really improves a lot given more time. My guess is that I can now use Level WG1 or even WG2 as the tournament levels, rather than level WF6 in the stock version.

It will be very interesting to now see if Star Opal Turbo can get a match win against the Cavalier!

I don't understand why Novag did not clock this thing at 16 Mhz to begin with. They have done it before and it is not as if the faster version gets too close to their 32K programs in playing strength (it is way behind them by about 400 points).

And the current Novag 16K programs can really use the extra power, since as I mentioned before, they improve greatly with the extra time, even though they will still make some bad blunders every now and then regardless.

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

The little Opal is now successfully working at 20 Mhz. Over the weekend I will try 22 Mhz, 24 Mhz and 30 Mhz, though I suspect the limit is 22 or 24.

In any case, I don't see any advantage at all in going beyond about 27 Mhz, since the way the levels are configured on this machine, to be able to use level WG7 as a tournament level, you would need to go all the way to 40 Mhz, which is impossible. But with 27 Mhz, and you can use level WG6 as the tournament level and get move averages of just under 3 minutes per move.

I will report back if my house does not burn down first ;)

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Well this experiment wasn't a success :( Although the star Opal ran fine at 22 Mhz, I actually could not obtain any fundamental overtone crystals beyond 22 Mhz in order to see if it could run faster than that. Of course, if you put in an overtone 32 Mhz crystal, for example, it is only going to run at 16 Mhz.

To make matters worse, the power consumption even running at 22 Mhz was horrendous. The Star Opal chewed through a brand new set of Lithium batteries in only 20 hours! Obviously such an overclocked Opal is only of any use when connected using an AC adapter.

But now comes the worst part of all. Both subjectively (i.e playing the unit myself) and also with games against other computers such as Cavalier, I did not notice any subjective improvement in playing strength with the program running almost three times as fast!

It was still making the same elementary blunders that it made at 8 Mhz. Infact in a 7 game match against Cavalier, it lost 6 games and only won 1 of them! And to make that result even the more baffling, a previous match played between the standard speed 8Mhz Star Opal saw the latter score 8.5/20 - a much better result!

So it seems that giving this program a lot more thinking time does not really help afterall :( It seems that if it makes a blunder through it's selective search, then extra thinking time won't allow it to see the mistake and instead make a better move.

I think there is something fundamentally wrong with these 16K Novag programs. They just seem to drop pieces and pawns through rather obvious and shallow combinations and using simple tactical themes such as pins and overworked pieces, etc. The much earlier 16K programs such as Constellation, VIP, Primo, etc were far, far stronger than these current models. I wish Novag would have just brought out an updated version of the VIP or Primo program. That would be a far stronger opponent than the current Star Opal / Carnelian II / Star Aquamarine.

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

but maybe you can exchange the EPROM with the SUPERNOVA version, or other 6301 version...

is there an EPROM in the machines ?

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Sadly no, there does not seem to be any EPROMS inside these machines. Or anything else inside them that can be hacked by an owner, apart from the crystals themselves. All these machines these days now seem to use the "Black Blob" CPU which presumably includes the program itself. Gone are the days where the Novag machines had chips per se. Even the Star Ruby has one of these "Black Blob" CPUs / ROM.

I have even written to Novag suggesting that if they release new programs in the future, that they consider adapting the much older 16K programs which played a far superior game. The old VIP, for example, ran on a 6301Y and was stronger than the original Constellation.

I wonder if Novag still have those older Kittinger programs such as Constellation, Primo, VIP, etc!? I would much rather trade the smaller openings libraries for a much stronger program once out of book!

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

i thought novag is bancrupt. they cannot produce anything, or ?

i do not understand... the new machines do not use H8 but 6301.
and although they use 6301 they have no eprom ??

i do understand that the H8 machines have no eprom.
but i would have thought the 6301 machines DO have eproms.

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Ich kann mir absolut nicht vorstellen, dass eine Uralt-CPU wie diese bereits das Programm implementiert hat. Einzig wenn es einen auf der 6301 basierenden Controller gäbe, wäre das denkbar - nur dann dürfte sich der Name des Controllers von dem der CPU gewiß unterscheiden. Klingt ziemlich mysteriös, das Ganze...

Gruß, Willi

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

EBEN. gerade die tatsache das scheinbar in den neuen Novags ALTE HArdware verbaut ist (restbestände von der VOR H8 Zeit)
stimmt mich hoffnungsvoll. ich denke man kann in die neuen Gurken
einfach die guten alen programme reinsetzen, sofern die tasten äquivalent sind und so.

supremo wäre 8 mhz
supernova 16 mhz. sollten aber andere tasten haben. einfach mal vergleichen.

wenn die tasten gleich sind, und die CPU, dann wird da auch ein eprom sein das man austauschen kann um aus dem schlecht spielenden programm ein schön spielendes zu machen.

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

woher hast du die Info, dass da ein 6301 verbaut sein soll? Der Star Opal ist doch als Single-Chip-Rechner katalogisiert...

Oder gibt es 6301 auch als Single-Chip? Beim 6502 solls ja sowas zumindest in der Entwicklung gewesen sein; ob es wirklich auf den Markt kam? Gehört hat man ja nichts mehr davon...


Gruß,
Robert

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Hi Robert, ich antworte mal für Thorsten...

Jonathan spricht im gesamten Tread von einem 6301 - daher stammt die Info.
Was "katalogisiert" angeht: Es tauchen immer wieder noch Fehler auf oder wichtige Ergänzungen zu bereits erfassten Geräten. Wenn man so ein Gerät also nicht selbst hat und somit nicht nachschauen kann, wird es schwierig."Single-Chip" = Controller
6502 basierende Controller gibt es... ;)

Gruß, Willi

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

ok, dann sollte ich eher Jonathan fragen, woher er die Info hat ;) denn ohne Nachweis möchte ich sowas nicht für bare Münze nehmen
und wie sieht es mit 6301 aus?

Falls ja: gibt es eine Möglichkeit, einen Controller zu identifizieren? (evtl. anhand der Zahl der Leiterbahnen, die aus dem schwarzen "Blob" herausführen?)

"Single-Chip" ist als Angabe der CPU in der Wiki halt nicht allzu aussagekräftig!

Angeblich soll Excalibur Geräte haben, die auf 6502 laufen (wenn ich mich recht erinnere, sollen es die Geräte mit dem Alexandra-Programm sein); das könnte vielleicht so ein 6502-Controller sein.


viele Grüße,
Robert

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

wenn mir jemand sagt er hat sein gerät aufgeschraubt und einen anderen quarz eingelötet gehe ich doch davon aus das er dabei auch den prozessor gesehen hat, und dabei zwischen H8 und 6301 unterscheiden kann.
ich kann selber keine aussagen machen da ich das gerät nicht habe.
der besitzer kann es. viel mehr wenn er es aufgeschraubt hat.

oder?

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

ich denke mal, da gibt es außer dem berühmten schwarzen "Blob" nicht viel zu sehen, oder? (ich habe meinen Opal II noch nicht aufgeschraubt); ich vermute mal, dass man mit dieser Bauweise billiger produzieren kann.

Deshalb habe ich ja gefragt, ob es eine Unterscheidungsmöglichkeit gibt...


Robert

Edit: meine obige Frage kann ich selbst beantworten: der 6301 ist laut Wiki schon von Haus aus Single-Cip...

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

I might be wrong about the Star Opal having a 6301 processor. As I say, it is the same black blob format found in current generation Novag products as well as Excalibur products. The only visual differences are the number of connecting pins.

The older Opal Plus (or Opal II, can't recall which one but I think it is the Opal Plus) definitely had a 6301Y processor inside. I remember opening the older model up to check this. The processor was the same as found in the much older Mephisto Europa or Saitek Express 16K / Cavalier. Definitely a 6301Y. As Robert says, the 6301 is single chip anyway, so I would not expect to find an EPROM in a single chip machine.

Novag of course claims that the newer Star Opal is slightly stronger than the older Opal Plus. Since I am almost certain that Novag have not changed the actual program itself, perhaps the slight increase in playing strength came from having a different processor - the mysterious black blob.

That said, I am not really sure there is any increase in strength as Novag claims. As I mentioned earlier, match results against other computers are very inconsistent with this 16K Novag program. I think it has a lot to do with the inbuilt randomisation of this program. It would probably play a lot better if it just played the "best move" from it's perspective each time.

AW: Turbocharging Novag Star Opal
 

Yes. I have heard this from a reliable source as well. I was told by a collector years ago that the Excalibur machines such as King Arthur, LCD Talking Chess, Ivan II, etc all ran on 6502 processors of varying clock speeds. All of these machines had the black blob CPUs and an external crystal or resonator from memory :)

Alexandra / Deluxe Talking are perplexing though. They play a much more competant game than the earlier models I mentioned above. I would say a good 100 points stronger at least and I can't believe that was achieved just through software changes.