Radiophon Chess Master
This page was last updated : 03-Jul-24 23:46:45
When I visited the 51e Dortmunder Funk Amateur Treffen in december 2023, I found this gem. A Radiophon Chess Master including the manual. It needed some work because of some water damage, but I got it going again.
It was build in 1984 in the German Democratic Republic, and the computer is build into a wooden cabinet and the board has magnetic contacts which recognized the moves without pressing.
The pieces are stored in a drawer in the cabinet.
Elo 1400 so strong enough to keep this average player busy :-) 
Some photo's of the interior I made during the repair. The main CPU board suffered from quite a few dry joints and some corrosion due to the water damage.
Closeup of the transformer. Luckily no water damage there, because this beauty is powered by mains instead of batteries (I didn't measure the current consumption but I guess it's way to much and you might need D cells).
After touching up the dry joints and cleaning up the corrosion, it started to show some live again.
The drawer needed some new drawer lining which I found on amazon.nl. Also this lining was a perfect replacement for the felt feet of the chess pieces.
And when the repairs where done, it was game time.
More info :
- https://www.chessprogramming.org/Chess-Master
- https://tluif.home.xs4all.nl/chescom/EngChesMas.html
- http://www.chesscomputeruk.com/html/veb_erfurt_chess-master_table.html
This beautiful piece is now on display in my living room and once in a while I power it up to play a few games.
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