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Problems with Winboard - fix??

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MANOHARARAJAH VALAVAN

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Jun 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM6/6/96
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As I mentioned earlier, I was having problems with winboard reading my
printf() statements - that was easily fixed via the fflush().

Now it seems to have a problem with hooking up to ICS and playing an actual
game. It usually crashes on the first time someone challenges a program else
it never does crash.

I tried playing around with some code in WinBoard, and when I turn a timeout
option to be higher, the program does not crash!!

On line 4312 of winboard.c there is a timeout value for telnet. I changed
this from 15 to 50 and it seemed to work for me.

I am not sure what this exactly does, but it seemed to work for me (maybe its
got something to do with my SLIP access setup?).

Tom mentioned he was having all sort of probs with WinBoard - maybe you should
give this a try (if you are having crashes during the first few challenges
that your program comes across).

--
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
man...@ecf.utoronto.ca | 3rd year Comp Eng., University of Toronto
Valavan Manohararajah |
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Tom Kerrigan

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Jun 6, 1996, 3:00:00 AM6/6/96
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Hum, interesting that a telnet timeout value would have any effect on anything
*after* a connection has been made.

Cheers,
Tom

_______________________________________________________________________________
Tom Kerrigan kerr...@frii.com O-

For years a secret shame destroyed my peace --
I'd not read Eliot, Auden or MacNiece.
But now I think a thought that brings me hope:
Neither had Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Pope.
-- Justin Richardson.

MANOHARARAJAH VALAVAN

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Jun 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM6/7/96
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In article <4p70a8$j...@europa.frii.com>,

Actually sorry about that post.... the value I changed is not really a
telnet timeout value but a timeout value for the buffer. The telnet app
reads input from the network until the given time runs out, then winboard
parses whatever it read from ICS. It seems that a higher value (by default
this was set to 15 - I changed it to 50) is better for slow machines/slow
connection??

Bob says he doesn't have any probs with winboard. Bruce says the samething.
But then they have P133s I believe. As for me, I am using a P66, and Tom
apprently uses a 486 dx 80.

Bruce Moreland

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Jun 7, 1996, 3:00:00 AM6/7/96
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In article <DsLw1...@ecf.toronto.edu>, man...@ecf.toronto.edu says...

>
>Bob says he doesn't have any probs with winboard. Bruce says the
samething.
>But then they have P133s I believe. As for me, I am using a P66, and Tom
>apprently uses a 486 dx 80.
>--
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
------
> man...@ecf.utoronto.ca | 3rd year Comp Eng., University of Toronto
> Valavan Manohararajah |
>-------------------------------------------------------------------------
------

I've had lots of problems with WinBoard, but none that I couldn't work
around. I ran it on Windows NT.

I finally decided that I would do better to hack the "telnet" code from
WinBoard and do my own processing of the input/output streams. This
worked better for me because I didn't have to deal with the WinBoard <-->
Gnu protocol, and I could avoid all the code in WinBoard that exists to
support its use as a real interface.

I think it is great that Tim Mann made this available, and that people
have been able to make it work. It's gotten a lot of people up and
running who otherwise would be entering moves by hand. Entering moves by
hand is NOT fun.

bruce

--
The opinions expressed in this message are my own personal views
and do not reflect the official views of Microsoft Corporation.


Tom Kerrigan

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Jun 8, 1996, 3:00:00 AM6/8/96
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I made a few changes to WinBoard to get everything working reasonably:

1) Never display a dialog box. This just hangs everything and pretty much defeats
the purpose of an automatic interface.

2) Always send the side the computer is on. This is particularly helpful when
unadjourning games, because the computer might try to move before it gets the
'white' string and everything gets confused.

3) Send a CR every 45 minutes or so. This prevents logoff due to inactivity.

All of these changes are pretty straightforward to code, but if you get stuck on
one, feel free to write me and i will send instructions or source.

Cheers,
Tom

_______________________________________________________________________________
Tom Kerrigan kerr...@frii.com O-

Think honk if you're a telepath.

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