Chess Traveler

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