Author: John Merlino
Date: 17:46:47 02/15/01
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On February 15, 2001 at 19:44:50, David Dahlem wrote: > >On February 15, 2001 at 18:34:38, John Merlino wrote: > >>On February 14, 2001 at 09:47:03, David Dahlem wrote: >> >>>In the Game Room, some Winboard personalities play almost instantly with their >>>corresponding white or black box checked in the thinking lines window. This >>>happens no matter what time control is used. With the box unchecked in the >>>thinking lines window, they play correctly. >>>These personalities, Comet, ExChess, Nejmet, and TCBishop, will not go past >>>depth 5, even in a 2 hour game. So there is no way to use the thinking lines >>>window with them. There may be others that do this but i'm sure about these >>>four. Anyone else noticed this behavior? >>> >>>Dave >> >>Here are my results from using the above four engines: >> >>Comet (B28) does OCCASIONALLY go past depth 5, but never past depth 7. Very >>strange. Selecting the checkbox merely sends a "post" command. It does nothing >>more. >> >>ExChess (3.14) appears to be fine, but I can't see any way to get it to report >>the depth because it doesn't appear to support post mode. However, the first >>non-book move it made in a G/10 game took 20 seconds, so that seems like it went >>past depth 5 to me, even with the checkbox selected. >> >>I couldn't get Nejmet (2.6.0) to work at all, and it actually screwed up both >>CM8000 and my system! Clocks stopped ticking and the engine wouldn't shut down. >>I eventually had to reboot, probably due to the memory leaks from having to >>manually shut down the engines. My notes from the development team say that they >>couldn't get Nejmet to work in CM8000, WinBoard, or even in a DOS prompt.... >> >>The Crazy Bishop behaves similarly to Comet. >> >>Any thoughts from the authors? >> >>jm > >Clicking the checkbox does send a post command, that can be seen in the Winboard >output window. But it also does something else for me. It makes these engines >move instantly. I can use a 2 hr. time control, and after these engines get out >of book, while they are thinking, clicking the checkbox will make them move >instantly. Unclicking the checkbox, they will think normally. I tested this over >and over so i know that is happening for me. I don't know whether this happened >before the patch or not. > >Dave I verified that the engines worked the same in 1.0.0 as they do after the patch. I think I know what the problem is. Not only does clicking the checkbox send "post", but it also sends the "." command, which is a request for a periodic update. The XBoard document does state that this is only valid if the engine is an "analyze" mode, but it appears that sending it to these engines when they are NOT in analyze mode causes them to move (and it shouldn't). I suspect that my machine may be faster than yours, as the engines in question are able to get a little bit deeper than you are. But the symptoms are still the same. jm
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