By Kenneth Bernholm
The Chess Traveler is a portable, computerized chess game designed and manufactured by SciSys-W Ltd. in Hong Kong, 1980. SciSys-W (short for Scientific Systems Winkler) was founded in 1979 by Swiss born Eric Winkler who still runs his company as Ryder Industries now out of Shenzhen, China.
The Chess Traveler was also distributed under other names with the British variants spelling "traveler" with a double "L":
In 1982, SciSys-W relased an updated version called the Chess Intercontinental Traveler with an LCD replacing the original 7-segment display. This version was also distributed by some of the brands mentioned above.
Among the features of the Chess Traveler are the 8 playing levels where level 1 responds within seconds and level 8 reportedly taking hours. The machine can also play against itself and test your moves for legality and much more. To utilize the Chess Traveler to the fullest, the instructions are needed, and fortunately the Tandy Computerized Chess owner's manual is available at the Internet Archive (local copy). Alternatively, YouTube hosts a pretty good Novag Chess Champion Pocket Chess demonstration video.
The Chess Traveler features an 8 bit Mostek 3870 microcontroller at 4 MHz (a single-chip implementation of the Fairchild F8). It has a built-in 2×64 bytes RAM (scratchpad and executable) as well as 2 KiB ROM containing the software. For the chess logic to operate, the PCB also features a Semi 3539 256×8 N-MOS RAM plus a TI 75492 display driver. See closeups of the PCB component side and solder side. Being a portable unit, the Chess Traveler can run 9-10 hours on six AA batteries. A PSU is not supplied in the box but a 2.5 mm mini jack on the back accepts 7.5 volt (center positive, 150 mA, 1.3 watt).
The actual chess software is written by Mike Johnson for Philidor Software. To try it out without a real Chess Traveler, Sean Riddle has an Acetronic Chess Traveller emulator for Windows (local copy) and details on the Mostek 3870 port assignments (summarized below).
1 | XTL1 | CLOCK | 40 | Vcc | +5 volt |
2 | XTL2 | CLOCK | 39 | RESET | |
3 | Port 0/0 | RAM A7 | 38 | EXT INT | GND |
4 | Port 0/1 | RAM A6 | 37 | Port 1/0 | N/C |
5 | Port 0/2 | RAM A5 | 36 | Port 1/1 | Segment G |
6 | Port 0/3 | RAM A4 | 35 | Port 1/2 | Segment F |
7 | STROBE | RAM R/W and OD | 34 | Port 1/3 | Segment E |
8 | Port 4/0 | RAM D7 | 33 | Port 5/0 | Display 4/Keypad row 1 |
9 | Port 4/1 | RAM D6 | 32 | Port 5/1 | Display 3/Keypad row 2 |
10 | Port 4/2 | RAM D5 | 31 | Port 5/2 | Display 2/Keypad row 3 |
11 | Port 4/3 | RAM D4 | 30 | Port 5/3 | Display 1/Keypad row 4 |
12 | Port 4/4 | RAM D3 | 29 | Port 5/4 | Keypad column 1 |
13 | Port 4/5 | RAM D2 | 28 | Port 5/5 | Keypad column 4 |
14 | Port 4/6 | RAM D1 | 27 | Port 5/6 | Keypad column 3 |
15 | Port 5/7 | RAM D0 | 26 | Port 5/7 | Keypad column 2 |
16 | Port 0/7 | RAM A0 | 25 | Port 1/7 | Segment A |
17 | Port 0/6 | RAM A3 | 24 | Port 1/6 | Segment B |
18 | Port 0/5 | RAM A2 | 23 | Port 1/5 | Segment C |
19 | Port 0/4 | RAM A1 | 22 | Port 1/4 | Segment D |
20 | GND | GND | 21 | TEST | GND |
Keypad | Port 5/4 | Port 5/7 | Port 5/6 | Port 5/5 |
Port 5/0 | A/1 | CE | LV | E/5 |
Port 5/1 | B/2 | ENT | FP | F/6 |
Port 5/2 | C/3 | MM | EP | G/7 |
Port 5/3 | D/4 | X | CB | H/8 |