Author: Dann Corbit
Date: 15:09:09 01/28/00
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On January 28, 2000 at 05:17:58, Peter W. Gillgasch wrote: >On January 28, 2000 at 00:55:33, Harald Faber wrote: >>On January 27, 2000 at 15:59:57, Dann Corbit wrote: >>>A big problem with Auto232 players is that they are programmed wrong. > >Which Auto232 players are you talking about ? > >>>I have a >>>solution: >>>Skeptical mode. >>> >>>In skeptical mode, the chess engine ignores any reset directives. It just keeps >>>on pondering and changes nothing unless some actual move sequence *forces* a >>>change in mode. In other words, in "skeptical" mode many of the winboard >>>directives are simply ignored. > >In Auto232 this is what the master should do. Either terminate the connection >with the slave because the damned thing doesn´t comply with the protocoll >or ignore. Depends. Serial programming is problematic on all platforms. A lot of programs seem to have a devil of a time with it. TCP/IP messages are a far more sensible approach. Not only is is faster, but much more reliable. >What has Winboard to do with it ? Nothing, mixing metaphors. Some Auto232 commands resemble Winboard commands. >>>Will it help? Actually, I think the programs that succeed _must_ already be >>>doing this. >> >>Wouldn't it be generally better to make it possible playing via LAN? > >A LAN per se doesn´t make things better. Why should it improve anything ? Faster, more reliable, ready made solutions, device and operating system independent APIs. The list is endless. The serial interface is an ugly artifact of the old CP/M and early MS-DOS days. As a communications protocol, it is lame. >If you have the source for the affected software __fix it yourself__ >and stop complaining ;) I do have it, but I'm not interested. A lot of other people are though. If they are interested enough, then they will fix it. If not, then they won't. I never play Auto232 so why should it matter to me? >Changing the transfer medium does not change the problem. If the slave >sends packets with master commands, the master has to cope with it. The >slave is broken, but the master is broken as well if he can´t handle >it - he communicates with his enemy so the assumption that the slave >is a damned uncooperative liar has to be built into your software. If >you don´t do this, well, you die as you do in real life :) The protocol is bad, the medium is bad, the whole idea is bad. Serial communications is very non-standard. It's just an entirely errant approach.
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