HIARCS 3 (0.3) Source Code
This is the source code of HIARCS 3 (known as version 0.3 to avoid confusion with commercial HIARCS versions of the 1990s).
The source code dates back from March 1981 and is the source code of HIARCS 0.3 as submitted as an O Level project at Mount Grace School, Potters Bar.
The source is in the Basic+ language and ran on a PDP11/70 located in Hatfield Polytechnic Campus, Hatfield.
The source is on dot matrix print out and the pages have been scanned in and are presented here as jpeg images. The b listings are a landscape view of the listing page where some lines were too long.
Source is copyright (c) 1980-2021 Mark Uniacke. All rights reserved
Resurrect HIARCS and win!
A competition was run to see if someone could get the source running on a PC or Mac. Being written in the interpretive Basic+ of 1980, it should have been possible to get it working.
We are pleased to have announced that Alain Zanchetta won! Alain successfully ported both 1981 and 1983 versions.
The 1981 version was complicated because the listing was slightly out of date with the execution runs as listings were rarely allowed in those "old days". Alain not only ported the Hiarcs 0.3 1981 version but also found and fixed a couple of bugs. We found a later set of listings from 1981 in storage and managed to augment Alain's port so that it could take part in the first stage of the match of the century against Chess Challenger 3 from 1978!
Although the 1983 version was not much longer than the 1981 version, it was significantly more complicated. Alain did an excellent job again of porting this Hiarcs 0.5 1983 version to Visual Basic and had to translate a number of gosubs into VB subroutines and handle the goto issues.
We have enhanced both versions so they can be run by anyone as a text console application on PCs. The resurrected old versions are available to download, install and play against. Please check our free chess software for details.