Most mind-blowing program for your favorite calculator

[Valentin Albillo]

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Hi, David,

(07-21-2022 08:41 PM)David Hayden Wrote:  Valentin's reversi (aka othello) for the 41C. It kicked my 17-year-old butt when I first got it. I was so amazed by it's talent that I spent an evening going through the source code to figure out how it worked.

Thank you very much for your appreciation, I wasn't much older at the time I wrote it. For those interested, these are some relevant links (PDF documents):

HP Program VA428 - UPL PS - HP-41C Othello (00903C)

This is my original submittal to the Hewlett-Packard Users' Program Library (USA) of my HP-41C program Othello at the request of HP UPL's Sandy Canning. Besides my original 15-page submittal, I've also included here four pages of good-quality barcode to allow for fast, error-free entry of the long program into the calculator using the wand.


HP Article VA019 - 25 years of Othello

8-page article to commemorate (2005) the 25th Anniversary of my HP-41C "Othello"-playing program. For those of you who feel nostalgic about the golden past of classic HP calculators, this article reminisces on those wonderful times back when the HP-41C was brand-new and everything seemed possible and everyone was in awe at it.

The article tells the whole story about how my HP-41C "Othello" program came to be, with its downs and its ups (like being featured at the time in an issue of the "Wall Street Journal" magazine), and including previously unpublished letters sent from HP Corvallis to me ("The program has generated a lot of interest in our division"), asking me to submit it to the HP-41C User's Library and awarding me a special "Certificate for Outstanding Contributions" in return.

Also included is a recreation of the original HP-41C "Othello" for the HP-71B with a few minor improvements, which is a 43-line program with full instructions and sample run so that you can test your wits playing this challenging 8x8 board game against it, to try and feel what HP-41C users felt at the time when seeing it for the first time 25 years ago.


HP Letter 1980-08-01 - Letter from Valentin Albillo to Richard Nelson

This August 1980 9-page letter I sent to Richard Nelson includes the very first version for any machine of my Othello program, which was a long, optimized, polished program which would play quite fast a non-trivial game against the user, optionally printing a nice labeled board if a printer was available. Despite there being nothing remotely like it at the time, to my utter disbelief it was never published in Mr. Nelson's PPC Calculator Journal, no reasons given whatsoever, so I wasted one full year waiting for its publication before ultimately getting fed up and looking for greener pastures.

Thanks again, David, and best regards.
V.