Australian Eric White first dipped his toe in the water of the Hong Kong chess computer market in 1979. His offering, the Cassia Chess Mate had a pirated Ron Nelson program (Chess Challenger 10A) and was distributed under both the Cassia and Toytronic brand names.

                                         


 Whilst production of that machine was prematurely ended by objections to the unauthorised program White and his American partner Ken Cohen started large scale production of  chess computers in 1981 under the name White and Allcock. Allcock was White’s nickname for Ken Cohen. First came a cheap portable model called Computachess which was sold in many different variants including those shown below, by various distributors under a variety of brand names.

                                           

White and Cohen’s company name was later changed (more seriously) to Newcrest Technology Ltd, and in late 1983 to CXG Systems when their most ambitious model so far the Chess 2001 was released.

                                           


Despite producing some wooden and stronger playing chess computers greater emphasis was placed throughout on selling mass-market machines for hobby players and beginners. In the first four years alone they sold over one million chess computers. To help secure  their position in the mass market in 1987 they started an association with the Samole family of Fidelity and then Excalibur for whom they produced many of their models with Fidelity and Excalibur branding. This continued for the next decade. From 1988 to 1993 when the company temporarily folded (it soon resumed as Krypton/Systema) nearly all CXG models were identified by the Sphinx prefix.

The photographs below show a few CXG models that can be considered particularly rare. These include the rarer versions of the Sphinx 40, Sphinx 50 and Sphinx Commander wooden autosensory machines, plus the Sphinx Accolade and Sphinx Chess Scholar.

        

     

The only earlier model from the pre-Sphinx days that certainly fits the rare description is the CXG Super Computachess (CXG 009). This machine dating from 1984 is only found in one other collection that I am aware of, with another example spotted on an internet auction website. No doubt more will appear over time. The very similar Multitech CC-009 model is itself quite hard to find but not as rare.

Because most CXG models were either built in very large numbers or fall outside my 1977-86 special interest period the only CXG model in my collection worthy of inclusion in my Rare feature is therefore :-

CXG Super Computachess (CXG 009) (click to go to the webpage)