A reasonable chess engine on modern PCs is certainly doable, especially if you're old enough to remember there were many Chess programs that used just a few K of memory on 1 and 2 MHz 8-bit machines that could play pretty well. You can whip out a chess engine in an interpreted language nowadays and beat the pants off a top 6502 or Z80 programmer coding his tightest fastest stuff.
I got to work with Dan Spracklen, who did the original Sargon in 1978 with his wife Kathleen. Kathleen's brother did the port to Apple II, and I worked with him and with his son. (At the time I worked with these guys, the chess-for-consumer-profit business was done. I remember one guy who brought out Atari ST and Amiga Chess games and there was really not much market for them by that time.)
"Computer Gamesmanship" is a terrific introduction to chess programming as hobbyists performed it in 1983. It's still a delight to read. Covers the good stuff: alpha-beta, minimax, etc.
It's a good enough book that you can start there and then learn about the advances made since.
