# Mac PowerBook chess game **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [January 30, 2010, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053 "2010-01-30T20:46:28Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/1 "2010-01-30T20:46:28Z")
As long as I’m asking about computers… I bought my PowerBook G4 about five years ago. It came with a nice little chess game in Widgets. You could change the design of the board and pieces. Now, I’m not a chess player, so maybe it’s not the best game out there. Good time-waster, though. Somewhere along the line, the game disappeared. Can’t find it anywhere. ISTR (this was a few years ago now) that I might have accidentally deleted it. (I don’t know how I would have done it – dragged it into Trash and then empties my Trash?) Not a great loss, but occasionally I think about it and would like to play it. For general time-wasting I can always play Sudoku. Short of finding my original systems discs, is there a way to get this specific chess game back? And if I do find my discs, can I just install the game rather than reinstalling the whole system? ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/2 "2010-01-30T21:02:56Z")
Apple’s dashboard widget browser doesn’t have a current entry for a chess-playing widget, and if it’s [this one](http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/21193/chess) it’s defunct. If you do manage to find the system disks, it shouldn’t be too hard to find it. Most extra or third-party stuff is in a separate folder, possibly even a second disk. Worst case, it’ll be inside a package installer. Use [Pacifist](http://www.charlessoft.com/) to poke around in .pkg files and extract just what you need. (If this was not actually a Dashboard Widget, look for Chess.app on the system disk. If you lost the system disk, you might need to start [from the source code](http://www.opensource.apple.com/source/Chess/Chess-110.0.6/)). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/3 "2010-01-30T21:12:53Z")
It wasn’t the defunct one. This one was 3D. I looked for Chess in Finder. I found a folder containing some files I can’t open (.lrn, .rc, .opn, .db). Elsewhere there’s com.apple.chess.plist. I should check my iMac G3 to see if it’s on there. ---
**Author:** ![Baal\_Houtham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/baal_houtham/32/13604_2.png) [@Baal\_Houtham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baal_Houtham)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2010, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/4 "2010-01-30T21:23:49Z")
Sigma Chess Lite for Mac is less pretty but a dramatically more useful program. > **[SIGMA Home Inc](https://www.sigmachess.com/)** > > SIGMA Home Inc specializes in the home industry. Click the link to learn the importance of staying on top of this industry. I also like it better than any freeware Windows chess program I’ve found. It’s simple, good looking, does game analysis, and imports several varieties of PGN. It isn’t incredible strong (maybe around 2300 ELO) but that’s plenty powerful for my needs. ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/5 "2010-01-31T03:09:29Z")
Did it look like the first and last screenshots [here](http://www.jonathanmoeller.com/screed/?p=15)? That’s ‘Chess.app’, and if it wasn’t found by search and it’s not located in the Applications folder (under simply ‘Chess’), then that’s the one you want. The plist (prefs) file suggests strongly that this is the case, since if that’s there it was installed at one time. It’s something that gets installed by default on almost every OS X install, so any other Mac should have it. You should only need to copy the Chess program from the Applications folder. That said, I’d second **Baal Houtham** ’s suggestion of Sigma Chess as an alternative. It has a lot of features, but doesn’t really get in the way with them once you set it up. You can also scale the difficulty tolerably well. (I usually play on a lowered difficulty, which means it only looks a tiny ways ahead. I once won on time with only my king against _two queens_ because it couldn’t find the path to push me out of the middle). ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/6 "2010-01-31T03:15:50Z")
**pj** : That’s the one. It seems to have been deleted. I’ll see if it’s on the other computer. ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/7 "2010-01-31T03:37:31Z")
Note that it doesn’t run under 10.5 - that may be why it got deleted. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/8 "2010-01-31T03:39:52Z")
I’m running 10.4. This computer’s five years old. Doesn’t seem worth going to 10.5 when I should be thinking about getting a newer, more powerful machine. ---
**Author:** ![TimeWinder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bcef8e/32.png) [@TimeWinder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TimeWinder)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 4:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/9 "2010-01-31T04:50:36Z")
> [@beowulff](#): > > Note that it doesn’t run under 10.5 - that may be why it got deleted. Chess.app? It’s installed on my computer, which never had anything less than 10.5 on it, and runs fine now in 10.6, if you don’t count that it’s obviously cheating because it beats me all the time (for some reason I’m much better at chess against humans). But it’s not a widget, maybe there were two forms of it? ---
**Author:** ![beowulff](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/beowulff/32/542_2.png) [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)\ **Post date:** [January 31, 2010, 4:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/mac-powerbook-chess-game/527053/10 "2010-01-31T04:54:33Z")
> [@TimeWinder](#): > > Chess.app? It’s installed on my computer, which never had anything less than 10.5 on it, and runs fine now in 10.6, if you don’t count that it’s obviously cheating because it beats me all the time (for some reason I’m much better at chess against humans). But it’s not a widget, maybe there were two forms of it? Well, the version I have says it won’t run under this OS, and doesn’t. So, they must have updated it at some point, and never told me.