MCBSTM32E
The evaluationboard MCBSTM32E was the first one in use from 2009 until 2013.
The board has an ARM-Cortex-M3-CPU onboard ( 32-bit ), running at 72 MHz
and has 64 KB internal SRAM ( + 1 MB external SRAM ).
As typical for all evaluation-boards there are a lot of "peripherals" available as well,
like SD-card-slot, COM-port, AD-device, timers, LEDs, Joystick, buttons and so on.
Most of the stuff I haven't used so far or is not really required for the engine.
Before starting work on the chess-engine, I have tested different
evaluation-programs to get first experiences with the whole stuff.
First tests started in 2009 already.
The chessprogram used is a didactical one developed by Christian ( Chrilly ) Donninger and Dieter Steinwender.
Mr Donninger is well known for his engines Nimzo and Hydra.
This program is dated back to around 1993 ( written in C and called "minimax" ).
It uses the so called 10x10-board-representation for the move-generator.
The move-generator is one part of the chessprogram and as the name explains already, creates moves according to the rules.
Without going much into details here, many classical chess-programs used this kind of move-generator, because it is comparatively easy to implement.
The reason why using 10x10 and not 8x8 has to do with the knight-moves
to test for legality.
This is possible as well with an 8x8-representation but more difficult.
The program has been modified and expanded.
It uses ( as the name minimax tells already ), the classical minimax-search
including alpha-beta-aspiration-window.
This version is strong enough to compete with most classical commercial
programs, I would estimate the playing-strength around 2000 ELO in tournament-mode.
The engine uses an check-extension, but no further search-strategies like null-move eg.
Max depth is 30 halfmoves.
Because I switched to the much faster bitmap-engine end of 2013, work
on the MCBSTM32E has been terminated.
For beginners in chess-programming Minimax is really a good starting-point !