ONLY THREE were manufactured.
This Mercedes-Benz Dedicated Chess Computer is the NUMBER 3. It was offered to the CEO of Daimler going to retire.
Each participating employee was giving several hundreds of marks.
One of the most interesting enigma was the program included in the EPROMs of the module.
Some chess lovers were in the group of engineers at Daimler. What was in the plans of H & G, notably the use of the Ulf Rathsman MM III as a successor to the MM2? Is this program in this Mercedes-Benz Module (fully engineered in their manufacture of Sindelfingen)?
Dietmar Lauber helped me to enter in contact with the previous owner. He was the son of the CEO of Daimler. I got by him the story of this gift. I wrote a report on this machine that Hans Van Mierlo sent to Hein Veldhuis. He published it on his site: Hein_Veldhuis
However the story does not stop there and, second episode, a second Mercedes-Benz popped up and I was enough lucky to get it. However, the owner of the computer was, this time, an engineer who piloted the realization of the project. He explained me that this computer was made to cover any problem with the first one. He told me also that in fact, with the other engineers, he designed and manufactured 3 Mercedes-Benz boards. The number 3 was the last one made and it was this one which was offered to the retiring CEO. The number 2 was offered to another executive some years after. The number one, the first made, stayed in the manufacture of Sindelfingen until 2010.
Dietmar Lauber decided to write the full story of these exceptional boards: [nturl=http://chesseval.com/ChessEvalJournal/DaimlerBenz.htm]Lauber's story[/nturl]
The last episode has to come with a lot of unanswered questions.
The 3 computers were different. "Differents solutions" were tried and some improvements appeared with time.
It is amazing to think how much, in the nineties, Daimler engineers were pushing at its extreme the passion for dedicated chess computers.
The module inside the computer Number 3 was intriguing and immediately Hans Van Mierlo saw the particularity of the EPROMs. The module has a structure similar to a MM II. The keyboard is without legends and the EPROMs have the Inscription "RT" for RaThsman (Ulf Rathsman - MMIII).