Author: KarinsDad
Date: 17:28:33 01/19/99
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On January 19, 1999 at 19:49:26, Michael Ginat wrote: >It seems that there are now only two boards commercially available. It seems to >me that there should be a huge market for a board that would work with any PC or >Windows program. You'd think that in 1999 the technology could not be THAT >difficult! Michael, The technology is probably not that difficult. The problem is the demand. You know many chess players and how many do you know that own chess playing software? Probably most of them. Now how many do you know that own a sensory board? Probably very few. The demand for sensory boards is just not there at the current prices. Most people can get away with either looking at the screen or at making all of the moves manually on a board (which you have to do anyway with a sensory board) and half of the moves within a program. Granted, having a real clock is nice and tournament-like, but sensory boards just do not have enough functionality for the price within the market. Sorry I cannot answer any of your questions below, but I had problems finding out the cost of the DGT board, let alone what software hooks up to it. There is also a potential (small) flaw with using a sensory board (at least I assume that it is there, someone can tell me if I'm full of it since I do not have one and cannot test it out). The computer opponent announces the move (via the speakers with the DGT board), it takes the player a moment to make the move, but in the meantime, your clock is running (assuming no delay placed on the clock). I assume that most of the tournaments it was testing in had delays on the clock and that this would not be noticed. Granted, I do not know this for fact and someone with a board can test it out. However, it seems to me that this would be the case. The reason I make this assumption is that if it did not work this way, every chess program would have to have a "default amount of time" before it started it's clock since the person playing the game may not move the pieces immediately. I'm making the assumption that the time involved is 0 seconds. If the chess program gets the time information from the DGT clock connected to the board (which is not a requirement for using the board), then that clock would have to either detect that the piece was moved (and then change) or it would have to default to changing after a set amount of time (possibly 0 seconds). Otherwise, the person playing could have a time advantage (if he had left the room or something for example). If I'm mistaken, someone please let me know. I have been interested in purchasing a sensory board, was unsure whether it would work properly when the clock has no delay. To me, a half second pause before changing from the chess programs clock to the human players clock after announcing the move would be more reasonable (and tournament realistic) than a zero second pause (assuming the clock is not set up with a delay). The human, of course, would still have to hit the clock (if there is one there) or should also have a half second pause (after the board detects that the piece was moved) if running on the computer's clock. KarinsDad > >Does anyone have any experience with the Novag board? They claim to have put out >a new driver for Fritz/16 with more to come. > >Also, has anyone tested DGT's claim that they have a driver which will support >all windows based programs? Would that include 32 bit versions? > >Any feedback appreciated.
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