XPER on the Commodore 64

Summary

In 1984, Gary Kildall and Stewart Chiefet covered "The Fifth Generation" of computing and spoke with Edward Feigenbaum, the father of "expert systems." Kildall started the show saying AI/expert systems/knowledge-based systems (it's all referred to interchangeably) represented a "quantum leap" in computing. "It's one of the most promising new softwares we see coming over the horizon."Hopeful Kildall, 1984One year later, Kildall seemed pretty much over the whole AI scene. In an episode on "Artificial Intelligence" he did nothing to hide his fatigue from the guests, "AI is one of those things that people are pinning to their products now to make them fancier and to make them sell better." He pushed back hard against the claims of the guests, and seemed less-than-impressed with an expert system demonstration.Skeptical Kildall, 1985The software makers of those "expert systems" begged to differ. There is a fundamental programmatic difference in the implementation of expert systems which enables a radical reinterpretation of existing data, they argued.Guest Dr. Hubert Dreyfus re-begged to re-differ, suggesting it should really be called a "competent system." Rules-based approaches can only get you about 85% of the way toward expertise; it is intuition which separates man from machine, he posited.I doubt Dreyfus would have placed as high as 85% competence on a Commodore 64. The creator of XPER, Dr. Jacques Lebbe, was undeterred, putting what he knew of mushrooms into it to democratize his knowledge. XPER, he reasoned, could do the same for other schools of knowledge even on humble hardware.So, just how much expertise can one cram into 64K anyway?Historical RecordXper2 download available here | Xper3 online hereTest RigVICE, in C64 modeSpeed: ~200% (quirk noted later)Snapshots are in use; very handy for database workDrives: XPER seems to only support a single driveXPER v1.0.3 (claims C128, but that seems to be only in "C64 Mode")Let's Get to WorkSo, what is an "expert system...