Mephisto RISC 1MB modules for the Exclusive and Munchen boards were announced in Spring 1992. Mephisto intended that these modules should compete directly, at a similar price, with Richard Lang’s Vancouver 68020 modules, shaking up the top of the dedicated chess computer market. When results started to come in RISC 1MB temporarily went straight to the top of the Selective Search Rating List (Aug-Sept) on 2401 Elo, though it soon dropped back.

After a false start, in which for instance faulty modules were returned by the testers in Sweden, the RISC 2 upgrade arrived in the UK in mid 1994. By early 1995 it was at around 2355-60 Elo on the rating list, some 40 Elo ahead of the RISC 1MB modules.

RISC 2 is the same Ed Schroeder program (Gideon 3.1 Madrid) that won the Hardware Division of the World Computer Chess Championship in Madrid, Spain on 23rd-27th November 1992, competing as ‘ChessMachine’. Follow this link for the tournament scores, games and photographs (link). RISC 2 uses an ARM2 RISC processor running at 14 MHz with 128 KB ROM and 1024 KB RAM. It has an opening book of about 80,000 half moves. The game style is said to be steady and positional. In Strong Group One it finished 8th of 10, in line with what you would expect from the Schachcomputer.info Active Chess ratings. An English Opening (Bremen variation) with white against Mephisto Pro London was one of its more interesting games until petering out into a draw by repetition. In another, this time a Caro-Kann with black, RISC 2 swaps endgame blunders with Tasc R30 for another repetition draw.