Novag Forte

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Constellation Forte B ¹

Novag Forte, (Constellation Forte, Super Forte)
a series of dedicated chess computers by Novag with 6502 programs by David Kittinger. Along with Novag Expert, the Forte was successor of the Super Constellation, released as Constellation Forte A in 1986, Super Forte in 1987, Super Forte B in 1989 and Super Forte C in 1990. The Fortes had plastic sensory boards with pressure sensors, a Dot-matrix display and 16 LEDs for file and rank square indication.

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Very Selective Search

According to Thorsten Czub, the Constellation Forte had a reduced weightiness of the pre scan heuristics (PSH) ¹ ² compared to the Super Constellation. A sophisticated selective search, dubbed Very Selective Search (VSS), was introduced with the Super Expert B and Super Forte B ³.

by Larry Kaufman from The Rexchess Story ⁴ :

The next step forward came when Novag's Dave Kittinger, Don and I jointly worked out how to do an effective selective search program. Dave put these ideas into the Super Expert B and Super Forte B, while Don and I put them into Rex.