The development of the chess computer as a consumer product of increasing chess strength, features and sophistication largely predates the internet. Whilst there is now a wealth of information about chess computers on the internet there is not much contemporary published source material in English from that important formative period from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s.

Here I am building an archive of articles and other written material about chess computers and computer chess from that period.  Hopefully these webpages will grow to include most of what is available. Individual articles will mainly be from defunct magazines such as Personal Computer World, Creative Computing, Your Computer and Byte. Many thanks to Mark Uniacke for providing some of these.

To access the articles, which are in pdf format, click on the pictures. NEW articles are those added in the last year or two. Click on the links below to go to pages covering :-

In addition the archive has been expanded to include computer chess magazines which give good coverage of the subject from 1983 all the way through to 2013.

Selective Search
1985-2013

All 166 issues of Selective Search magazine have now been added to the archive thanks to Eric Hallsworth’s very kind permission and Eric Wainwright’s initiative and generosity in organising and paying for the scanning of all 5000+ pages.

And for your further enjoyment Eric Wainwright has received permission from Mike Healey and Chess & Bridge Ltd (later owners of Countryside Computers) to include here the 14 issues of ‘Selective Search’ which were published in competition with Eric Hallsworth’s magazine from early 1993 to 1995.

Alternate Selective Search
1993-95

And finally 25 Service Manuals have been added to the Repairs section of the website.
The manuals are for various Mephisto, Novag and Saitek models. They typically include
Schematic and Block Diagrams, PCB layout diagrams (component and soldering sides),
Testing Procedures and some include Troubleshooting and Chip information.

Service Manuals