Two Questions about Chess machine emulators

[Wesley]

Hello everyone!

I have some questions about chess machine emulators, which I would like to resolve here, if possible.

I'm using Franz Huber's MessChess and I like make competitions between virtual machines and my GK 2100 (real machine).
What I have noticed is that some emulated machines lose against my GK2100 (elo 1900) .
The Fidelity line machines, mainly.
Obviously I rely on the official rating lists of these machines to make this observations.
Machines like Mephisto Genius, London, Saitek Analyst D++ (configured up to 18MHz) lose shamefully to GK 2100 (Elo 1900).
However, machines like Mephisto Berlin, Saitek Spark, Tasc R40, Novag Diablo play according to their real strengths against GK2100.
Am I doing something wrong?
Is there another emulator that would be better than this?


Another question: Increasing the "maximum speed" (in options) on these machines, when possible, speeds up the clock. So I would like to know if it also speeds up the program's analysis as well.

Thanks.

[Tibono2]

Hello!

The GK2100 is pretty strong, rather on the tactical side, and can be a "feared opponent" for some lines of computers.
I am not that surprised it can rule facing the Fidelity chess computers, even strong ones - at least before reaching endgame, where the Morsch program is known to get weaker.

On another hand, the difference you report for Mephisto Genius or London as opposed to Berlin looks unexpected to me, as they belong to the same Lang series. I don't think you are doing anything wrong, but beware you need many games played to assess a "real strength". Moreover, the strength measure should result from facing several opponents for variety of skills, styles... which the Wiki-Elo-list does. By the way, if you were refering to this list, it is not to be considered "official", I quote Micha: "It should be noted again that these lists are purely a game of this community. I would like to expressly point out that these lists do not claim to be complete, but should only be viewed as a guide for a rough assessment of the performance of various devices. Due to the still small database, nothing else can be expected."

Which level are you setting, both on your GK2100 and the MessChess properties for the emulated devices?

I am definitely sure no better emulator exists. All comparisons performed so far, real hardware versus emulated, prooved perfect fit, and if any difference occurred (in speed, as the ROM is simply reused as-is), it has been neutralized thru the speed/clock adjustment. Only a couple of devices (Sparc and V11) cannot be considered "reference" as the hardware is not 100% compliantly emulated, clock adjustment simulate the required resulting speed (and it is good enough, to my humble opinion).

With increased speed option, usually the whole device speeds up, including analyzing. With some more smartly designed ones (the original hardware, I mean) the game clock keeps ticking correctly, so you don't need to adapt the level to benefit from the CPU speed-up. This can be true up to some point, though. I think I remember fast Fidelity devices behave so: there is a threshold where the game clock cannot anymore stand the too high speed set.
Kind regards,
Tibono

[Wesley]

Thank you, Tibono, for your attention.

I believe I'm underestimating the strength of the GK2100.
This machine is very strong, for games of 30 minutes or more.
But, really, on some Mephisto machines, where you can adjust the mhz, the GK still seems to do better.
People say that GK2100 has 1900 elo, but I think that in games against humans it should be 2100+.

As a complement, today I saw that Franz added h8 processor machines to his emulator collection.
I'm excited to test it out.

Thanks.