Overtom Chess Computer Museum catalogs 411 dedicated chess computers across 8 brand categories, from Mephisto and Novag to Tandy/Radio Shack.
Key Takeaways
Scisys, Saitek, and related brands form the largest named category at 86 units; Novag follows with 53 and Mephisto with 50.
Diversen (miscellaneous) lists 103 entries, suggesting broad coverage well beyond the named brand lines.
Fidelity (29), Excalibur (31), CXG/Sphinx (36), and Tandy/Radio Shack (23) complete the eight indexed manufacturer groups.
The index is organized by brand, making it a reference catalog rather than a narrative history.
Hacker News Comment Review
The Excalibur Phantom robotic self-moving board drew immediate recognition: commenters noted it surfaces cheaply on eBay as “untested,” is often an easy fix, and opens with a few screws to reveal a remarkably small PCB and minimal wiring.
Historical gaps were flagged: El Ajedrecista (1912) and Claude Shannon’s Caissa machine predate every indexed unit and remain absent from the collection.
The Fidelity Chess Challenger 7’s Z80 processor and roughly 1300 Elo made it deterministically beatable; one commenter reverse-engineered it by logging off-book responses in a notebook, exploiting the engine’s fixed reply tree.
