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Subject: Re: Rebel10 & Auto232 ???

Author: Eelco de Groot

Date: 13:35:23 03/03/00

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On March 03, 2000 at 14:37:50, Aseldar Salautdinov wrote:

>I remember that I have read at that Message Board that it is something we can do
>with Rebel10 to make it play by AUTO232.
>How should I turn on AUTO232 in Rebel10?
>
>
>
>Thanks.

It took a little searching on the old 386, but I think I found the message back.
After reading Ed's problems with AUTO 232 I'm don't really understand why people
want to try this. Chrilly Donninger couldn't help much either, I believe he lost
the original source. Unpardonable!(There was a post in German on Nimzo's message
board

http://mitglied.tripod.de/Nimzo_Werkstatt/index.htm

concerning this).

This was the message by Ed on Rebel Board:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Posted by José Berdiñas Bonefua on September 28, 1999 at 21:23:08:
>
>I am waiting the auto232 support for Rebel 10.
>You promise it!!.
>
>José

This is not true.



I promised that I would set free auto232 in case I was able to solve the auto232
problems I have seen. That is quite something else.



Anyway it is good that you bring up the topic as now after 8-9 months of close
investigations I can share some remarkable findings about auto232.



I know now there is not a (big) problem other than that I have noticed the below
list of weird things which are good to know for everybody who use auto232.



#1. In rare cases I have seen Rebel's NPS drop with a factor of 3 during an
auto232 match. Thus playing a match on a PII-450 the machine at some moment in
the auto232 match the PC Rebel was running suddenly behaved as a PII-150
machine. The factor 3 is remarkable because it is an indication it smells to
hardware and not to software.



Of course the outcome of these matches are worthless and I wouldn't exclude the
possibility such things also happen on the machines of Rebel opponents. The BIG
problem is: how do you recognize it? Perhaps it happens a lot more because it is
difficult to notice it. I think that for the future I will add some code to test
the reliability of the program after each game.



#2. I have seen Rebel and Rebel opponent crashes. Not that I consider an auto232
crash as a big deal as after all auto232 is tricky software and you are asking
for trouble. But if after a crash the BIOS is corrupted too I consider that as
very serious. In such cases I consider such a  match as worthless as I have
noticed in such cases Rebel or the Rebel opponent has a big advantage in the
match sore (silly match scores like 15-1) which is a clear indication the other
PC is totally nuts.



#3. Quite often after "exit program" the memory of the PC is corrupted. I have
seen for example error silly error messages like, "Sector not found  abort,
retry... " or other strange stuff. In such cases you sometimes even can't run
another program, you have to reboot first to get the PC working again. Of course
this raises the question, "how valid was the match you just played?".



#4. I have seen Rebel (and other programs) play moves that couldn't be
reproduced while Rebel is programmed to do so. I have not much of such cases but
the fact it happens isn't a funny thought as you don't have the time to check
every auto232 move.



#5. I have seen Mchess give away a rook to Rebel without any reason as the
position was drawish. It was impossible to reproduce it manually. I saw the
Mchess case by accident because I was watching the game.



#6. I remember a case (which is similar to #3) that after an auto232 session the
PC in question couldn't recognize the modem anymore when I tried to log-in to
the Internet on that machine. The most worse thing on this case was that I was
able to reproduce it time and time again.



So far the list (which is not complete) but these are the cases I remember. It
made me conclude that auto232 is more fragile than I already thought. An
important second conclusion for me was that the problem isn't related to Rebel
but that all programs sometimes go nuts because of auto232 for totally unknown
reasons.



I therefore see no reason any longer that Rebel10 should not support auto232.
Auto232 in Rebel10 becomes active if you copy a file. To be more precisely do:



COPY USERINFO.CFG to AUTO232.CFG



Then check the menu OPTIONS (F3) and the "auto232" option should be present.



Ed Schroder



Posted on CCC and Rebel-Board
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