Author: John R. Menke, Sr.
Date: 01:08:18 10/08/99
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Greetings again, I was testing CM7000 using games recorded with CM5000 and CM6000. That's part of the problem. Apparently they are incompatible. CM7000 doesn't know which color (white or black) is next to move, in some such games. That's apparently why I couldn't get it to "wake up" and start thinking, because it was the wrong side's turn to move!? I'll note one further bona fide bug: Regarding the VCR controls on the move list, with a game loaded, click the leftmost button to return to the starting postion, then click the rightmost button to goto the final position, and it crashes the system. I haven't seen that kind of thing for a long time. It reminds me of how the old Sargon and first Chessmaster used to crash my Commodore 64. It must be very amateurish, un-debugged code. My benchmark position took 19 minutes with CM7000 but only 13 minutes with CM6000. That's enough for me! MC7000 is a lot slower on my system. Adios -- CM7000 no es mi amigo! It goes... My only problema now is that I have uninstalled everything possible but there is still 9MB of junk hidden somewhere, probably DirectX crap. I've also got a joystick controller now, but I never wanted one! Oh well, I'll weed it all out little by little over the coming months, a good reminder not to trust Mindscape stuff again. I really like CM5000-CM6000, and am sorry (personally disappointed) that CM7000 is a lemon (in my hands). It may work OK for some people. Some are reporting that it does. But there are also those who, like me, are finding it very buggy. That is the challenge of software writers, to make their product compatible with the very broad range of computer equipment in current use. The final statistics are yet to be known, but chalk me up (and Michael Cummings above) on the negative side. --JRM On October 07, 1999 at 17:27:41, John R. Menke, Sr. wrote: >Greetings, > >I just received & installed CM7000, and my early impressions are negative. I >don't like the new design, and I'm finding a host of apparent bugs. I may keep >it for a few days then return it for a refund, and go back to the more reliable >CM6000. In the meantime, I'll try to solve a few of its problems. > >For example in the gameroom I can't get it to wake up and think when a defined >personality has the black pieces. CTRL-W (the wake up command) doesn't work. >And if I try to move the black pieces manually, it keeps telling me that I can't >move opponent's pieces!? Switching sides or flipping the board apparently does >no good. Has anybody solved this problem yet, or am I overlooking something?! > >There is also an apparent mixup when switching sides and/or flipping the board. >It forgets whose turn it is to move and lets the same side move twice, or am I >just confused?! > >I did the minimum installation, which was supposed to take only about 19MB of >hard drive space. However by just following the directions on screen, accepting >only what it said was required, it put 55MB of stuff on my hard drive. It put >on something called Quicktime and DirectX, and even changed my video drivers. >Wow! I'll certainly have to get rid of most of that...if I keep it. Space is >fairly valuable on my 512MB hard drive. > >Although not thoroughly tested, the CM7000 chess engine appears to run quite a >bit slower on my system (AMD5x86 133MHz 64MB RAM), only about half as fast as >CM6000. Unless that problem is solved pronto, that alone is enough reason to >return it. With CM6000 I can usually reset my computer system to optimize the >running speed, a technique that also works with Fritz 5.32 and Hiarcs 7.32, but >that doesn't seem to affect CM7000. > >I use 800x600 video resolution so I loaded that size CM7000 layout, but some of >the screens are the wrong size for that resolution. > >It has no resave/replace provision. So if I try to save the same game to disk >again, it keeps adding a .cmg appendage each time. After a few resaves, the >name gets pretty darned long with all those ".cmg" extensions on the end!? > >I admit that I don't adapt to new things quickly or easily, so maybe I'm being >overcritical and blockheaded here. I would welcome if anybody can straighten me >out on some of the above points. > >--JRM
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