Commodore - chess - Vintage Commodore Chess Mate (1978) - Spelcomputer

For sale, Vintage Commodore Chess Computer, Chess Mate 1978

The Birth of ChessMate
Commodore International was a fairly diversified company by 1978. They had a semiconductor division, computer systems division, metal products division and a consumer products division. The consumer products division was largely focused on watches and calculators, but they had the resources, expertise and distribution channels in place to take consumer electronic devices to market, and the wild success of Peter Jennings’ MicroChess had not gone unnoticed.


ChessMate Prototype in 1978

Commodore set about to introduce an electronic chess playing game based on Peter Jennings’ MicroChess running on the KIM-1. They hired Peter as a contractor and began working on the device which would be a pared-down KIM-1 with a modified version of Peter’s original MicroChess code in ROM. The ChessMate board was powered by a 6502 derivative, the MOS 6504 cpu. Development of the ChessMate took place in Commodore’s Palo Alto, California facility at 901 California Ave.