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Subject: Questions concerning CSTal, retail version DOS

Author: Detlef Pordzik

Date: 15:39:29 11/28/97


This is dedicated towards the gentlemen C.Whittington + T.Czub, who
often
post here.

So, I hope, I can get reasonable answers to provide serious
dissappointments or upcoming anger.

Of course, this is not to be understood as an insult, but as a problem
of a user with the / their product.

So, on the main advertising page of CS Tal there is an announcement,
that the program supports " all known PC boards ".

" Well " - I thought, " that's a supposal " - because I read in the
chess related NG's absolute opposite statements.

To my big surprize I saw CS Tal yesterday at a mass market store -
and to my even bigger surprise, a very clear + correct translation in
German, what was originally written in the homepage of Oxfords -
on the back of the box :
"...unterstützt alle, an den PC anschliessbaren PC Bretter...." - well,
this is no suggestion, no eventuality, but a clear described feature on
a sealed box - I can / must / and have the legal right to rely on this.

To make it short : I found no such possibility - if, it must really be
hidden good !
But, before setting up complaining postings - I invested quite some
money + phoned Oxford this afternoon. - A friendly gent gave me an
advice to use an undocumented command line at he prompt     : chess_/?
Well, this showed some commands., like "vesa" - "nohash" (??)- "autot"
"saitek" ( ha ?? ) and some more.
Result : none.
So, where + how can I get my TASC board II working please, sirs ?

Next :
I owe a PC with 128 Megs of RAM, under normal DOS 6.2 configuration, R9
for instance, grabs 60 Megs.
CS Tal announces proudly having detected 32 Megs (?!?) - available 17,
useable for hash ( not pawn hash ) 8 ( e i g h t ) Megs used in total.

I downloaded the so called " paris.zip " from the homepage, where Mr.
Whittington writes in a 2 k text file, that the new chess.exe should be
used after renaming the old one. This now would solve several problems :
some kind of draw error - sawn in Paris and : " .....able to use
m o r e hash tables..."
very good - how + where can I get proof of this ??
Because :
the GUI, concerning the hash setings ( of course ) isn't corrected -
still detects -silly enough - 32 Megs etc.....
I even tried the " x " mode to give the program each + every possible
choice - NOTHING changed, of course - exept one detail :
the supposed European ELO suggestion ( 107 % of P -Pro 200 ) before
stated as 2.442 ELO + now, after implementing the new .exe, detects a
possibility of.......2.443 ELO......an improvment......
Allright -
I again phoned Oxford, the gent still reacted friendly + kinda helpless,
because of his doc-advice not working. But he asked "....somebody,
working
on the Windows version of the product. This one told him - please NOT to
give CS Tal more hash - it would DECREASE the strenght of the
program..." ( THIS is really a hit for an answer for me )
Orininal tone.
So, gentlemen : how much hash can I use with your " paris.exe " - where
can I do the changes concerning this ??
I suppose - ONLY in the .ini - but I won't touch this without advice.

To ask it as friendly as possible :
how come, that a RELEASE version promises things, that simply are not
held, i.e. are not available ?
-This is just the same as anouncing a database of 400.000 games included
+ nothing in at all.....-
how come, a product of 1997, after so many years of hard work - as I
suggest - comes out with such irritating, poor possibilities to detect
correct the amount of available hash ?

To make it clear :
after this clear cheating of CM 5.000, announcing nearly the same - I
reacted quite upset - and I'm not willing to spend my money on a program
that allready offers me lies on the coverage.
Beside this - this affects German law ( unlauterer Wettbewerb, BGB ).
But - I want to support the increase of this new idea....
+ so I ask for a quick solution, please.

Kind regards

ELVIS
elvis@owl-online.de



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