Announcing MAME for PicoChess:

[Scally]

Hi all,

I know some you have asked in the past wether we could port MAME (Multi Arcade Machine Emulator) to PicoChess and I’ve said “watch this space” or given other hints to its possibility.

Well, following almost a years work on and off for Dirk this is no longer a wish, it’s a fact, MAME works on Picochess. This is on Raspbian Buster only owing to the software version levels required to code & compile it. I’ve known about this for a while but have only become involved since Dirk asked me to to help with the compiling and to tidy up engines.ini and other small items in the last 3 Months. Dirk was compiling MESS for MAME (Multi Emulator Super System) on his RPi 3 and RPi 3b+ and it was taking between 24 and 48 hours and often needed several restarts. On my RPi 4b with it’s attached SSD drive and a couple of added parameters, this compile now runs in the background for only 2hrs and 20mins.

The prerequisite install libraries, where to get the MAME libraries, my MESS compile, Dirk’s added lua files (to interface with MAME), a working engines.ini with engine & uci examples and where to get legimate ROMs will all be provided over the coming week, plus all the details on where this code needs to be placed within PicoChess.

What we need to finalise is wether we can share any of the other ROMs & associated lua code from the guy who’s coded them and how much can be shared without infringing any copyright rules or other legal issues regarding the ROM images. At the very least, we will show you how and where everything goes, you may just have to find the extra ROMs & lua files yourselves. I will be providing examples based on the ROM images made readily available by Ed Schröder on his Rebel13 website, where ROM images are provided with Richard Lang’s and Ed Schröder’s permission.

So far out of the available 240 available Chess Computer Emulations we have 92 running on PicoChess. A lot of the engines are similar to others so we haven’t added them yet. Others are a lot more complex where you have to work out from within the code what the levels are and what they are called etc. For those we have coded, we have included several but not all available levels, you can add to these easily by reading the manual on that chess computer. This integration is an ongoing process, some engines take a while to load, PicoChess takes a while to reboot or to close and a lot of the functuality is not there, for example you can’t do ‘take back’ without an eventual crash. However if you plug in a speaker & turn off voices & books, those engines that use their own book will be obvious and those that speak or beep all work. The Voice Challengers and Chesster are very amusing.

So far we have tested MAME on a RPi3, 3b+ and 4b (all on Buster) The majority of engines run at 100% on the RPi3 models (about 6 were around half speed), however all run at 100% on my overclocked RPi 4b.

That’s it for now, we will provide as much as we are legally allowed to, this will be added to my enhanced DropBox account together with a couple of video’s soon.

Watch this space for a link.


Cheers,

Al.

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

Fantastic!! I tried this about two years ago and lost patience on the compile time amongst other things. Thanks to the mame chess community also for providing command line Lua scripts for chess engines. They did it after I posted a request for how to run a command line chess engine without the UI. One the contributors to mame did this just to accommodate requests like mine!

This is great news and I will try an image once it's ready!

Shiv

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[Shivkumar Shivaji]

On legality and permissions. We could ask Richard Lang and Ed Schroeder. 

Ed was kind enough to quickly reply to a question on his ROM and compiling it. He wished us the best of luck, so I think permitting usage of his old ROMs is something he would not mind at all.

On Mon, Mar 9, 2020, 6:52 AM Scally <scall...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Scally]

Hi Shiv,

Yes permission is already given on Ed’s site as here:

http://rebel13.nl/dedicated/dedicated%20as%20uci.html

So I will be using these ROMs in my example and anyone wanting these ROMs can also download them from here.

It’s other ROMs I’m being careful about, anyone can find them, but I won’t be showing where to get them, just where to put them etc.


Thanks,

Al.

[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I meant permission to package those ROMs by Ed with the default Picochess image.

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[Scally]

Ah I see,

I wasn’t intending to supply an image just the know how to do it. My Internet speed is way too slow to upload images.

But I expect someone will eventually, so I get your point.


Thanks,

Al.

[Scally]

We’ve been toying with the idea of shall we / shan’t we announce this, hence no details as yet.

I guess if there’s no interest, then we won’t post how it’s done and maybe just show the videos.

We will see ....

Al.

[RandyR]

Well, I'm definitely interested, Al, and glad Amazon just dropped off a few more SD cards. :^)

Thanks to you and Dirk (and all others involved in Picochess and it's forks). I look forward to playing some old machines I no longer own.

Randy

[Jochen Schoof]

Hi Al,

definitely add me to the list of interested people, too. This is an incredible achievement. Kudos to you, Dirk, and everyone else who contributed.

Looks like I finally have a good reason to get myself a Raspi 4... :-)

-Joscho

[Henri Spijkerman]

Great news Al!!!

 

Playing old Mephisto computers on a Pi with DGT-board is a dream coming true, can't wait to try it out.

Picochess is already the _best_ chessprogram I know, so a new version including MAME is yet another step to perfection.

I salute both Dirk and yourself for all your efforts, can't wait its release!

Henri

[Scally]

Hi all,

I’m just waiting for the OK to share the lua code and for my Bash file with Instructions to be approved by Dirk.

Meanwhile Henri is my guinea pig and is currently testing it.

We should be ready for release either Friday or Sunday (I have a family gathering Saturday)

In the mean time here’s a little video clip:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/861ddznyeq92jgj/MAME-01Feb20.mov?dl=0


Cheers,

Al.

[liam luty]

Hi Scally 

What's the app / website on your ipad, look very good synced with the clock.

Thanks for the video.

Search Results

Web results

[Scally]

Hi Liam,

That’s no App just the normal PicoChess Webserver, search on this forum for Webserver for more details.


Al.

[Scally]

Hi all,

Good news, we are allowed to use all the lua files so we can now install MAME on PicoChess:

The full Instructions are in my README.md file here: https://github.com/ScallyBag/MAME-4-PicoChess

Please read it thoroughly before installation.

This part is particularly important:

* Copyright prevents us from telling you where to find the complete ROM set, so please don't ask. However should you find the ROMs you can legally use those of any Chess Computer you own, but please don't post the address

Cheers,

Al.

[Scally]

.... I should add that your existing Engines folder will be saved as armv7lPICO unless it already exists, you can rename this back at any time.

All this is fully commented in the Bash file that will install everything.

Al.

[RandyR]

I know what I'll be doing this weekend...

Thanks Al and Dirk.

Randy

[Henri Spijkerman]

What I would like to add to the instructions is that you need a 16gb SDcard in order to be able to add the MAME files without running into trouble during the installation. Don't forget to expand the filesystem in raspi-config before installing!

Henri

Op vrijdag 13 maart 2020 16:22:33 UTC+1 schreef Scally:

[RandyR]

Al,

I thought MESS was no longer necessary and was now part of MAME?

Randy

[Scally]

Hi Randy,

It is, but mess needs to be compiled for the platform it runs on, on a RPi 3 this can take 1-2 days. I compiled it on my RPi 4 / SSD drive combination in under 2 hrs 20 mins then zipped it and provided it as part of the build, saving everyone the hassle of building it themselves.

My Bash file does everything required.

I’ve tested it as has Henri.


Cheers,

Al.

[Randy Reade]

Thanks, Al. I guess my question is why isn't it MAME that's compiled for ARM rather than MESS. Forgive me if it's a stupid question.

Randy

[RandyR]

<sigh - editor issues... reposting...>

Al,

I ran the script but it failed at line 24:

cd ~/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/

I didn't take a picture of the issue before I opened the script in nano but it said something like 'couldn't find /root/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/'.

I believe the same error happened at lines 35, 41, 55, and 61, but I'm just giong by memory. I ended up entering the commands directly into the shell.

Also, I believe there is a typo in the Package Install instructions - libfontconfig-dev should say libfontconfig1-dev. apt was smart enough to make the switch.

Now it's time to see if this is working for me. Thanks for the effort.

Randy

[Scally]

Hi Randy,

Henri had the same problem, you have to cloned my repository to the root folder, note the cd ~/ before the clone.

My Bash file isn’t magic enough to know if you’ve cloned it to the wrong folder, it has to know where the files are to work.

See the README file:

* Install My MAME GitHub repository:
cd ~/ <<<<<< don’t type the arrows.
sudo git clone https://github.com/ScallyBag/MAME-4-PicoChess

etc .....

You can delete MAME-4-PicoChess from wherever you installed it, and start again.

The prerequisite libraries to install are taken directly from the MAME site, which works but does seem to be a typo.


Cheers,

Al.

[RandyR]

Al, I think that should be

cd / vice cd ~/.

[RandyR]

Al, can you explain what you mean by "You will need to match any time shown in the level settings by setting the same or similar times within the Time menu"? I noticed that the time is getting reset during the game once a move is made and I suspect it is related to this.

Thanks.

Randy

[Scally]

Hi Randy,

“ Al, I think that should be
cd / vice cd ~/.”

No, it’s cd ~/
This navigates to /home/pi/ otherwise known as the home or root directory.

That way I can be sure everyone is downloading to the same folder / directory for my code to work.

Anyway it obviously worked for you the 2nd time round.

As for my Time statement I’ll try to explain. The old dedicated chess computers have levels like game in 5 mins or move in 10 secs etc. These move in x were average time per move, whereas in picochess we have move in 10 and it moves every 10 secs unless in ponder mode and the move is foreseen, it can reply immediately with some engines. So what I mean is maybe allow more time to compensate. In my demo video, you can clearly see it replying in under 10 secs earlier on and more than 10 secs later on. So in move in 10, select Fischer 10,5 or move in 15, allowing more time. If it’s a 5 min game select Fischer 5,3 or game in 10. It’s for you to experiment to find what suits you best. You hardly want to be well into a game and the computer loses on time. There’s no continue game in MAME.

It’s still a work in progress.

As for weird clock resets back to start, yes we’ve seen this too. It’s a Buster quirk .... voice wasn’t working, they fixed it. Bluetooth wasn’t working they part fixed it but have a get-around/hack/fix. Now the occasional clock discrepancy ... who knows.

We aim to give you a flavour of the old machines, theirs and our interface is different. We’ve worked hard on this, try to enjoy it.

Al.

[RandyR]

Hi, Al.

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 2:26:50 AM UTC-5, Scally wrote:

Hi Randy,

“ Al, I think that should be
cd / vice cd ~/.”

No, it’s cd ~/
This navigates to  /home/pi/   otherwise known as the home or root directory.

Hmmm, I consider / as the root directory and ~/ as the home directory of the logged-in user pi (and /root as the home directory for the root user). I misunderstood your other message thinking you wanted the files downloaded to what I consider the root directory (/), hence my “I think that should be cd / vice cd ~/” comment.

So, I DID download the repository to the correct location (the home directory - it is still there). Here is the excerpt from my .bash_history file:

.

.

.

cd ~/

sudo git clone https://github.com/ScallyBag/MAME-4-PicoChess

cd ~/MAME-4-PicoChess

sudo ./AddMAME.sh

.

.

.

AddMAME.sh runs correctly up to and including the following command:

sudo mv -vn ~/mame_emulation/ /opt/picochess/engines/

However, the next command:

cd ~/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/

fails saying it can't locate /root/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/. So for some reason, the ~ folder within the shell changes from /home/pi to /root. I'm not trying to be a pain. I just know that others will encounter the same problem, as Henri and I have. I'm not sure if it's a Bash issue when spawning subshells or what. Do you need to use sudo within the script if you launch the script with sudo? I'm not conversant enough in linux to answer that.

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 2:26:50 AM UTC-5, Scally wrote:

Anyway it obviously worked for you the 2nd time round. 

No, I didn't run it a 2nd time. As I mentioned, I manually entered the required commands directly into the command line.

 

On Saturday, March 14, 2020 at 2:26:50 AM UTC-5, Scally wrote:

We’ve worked hard on this, try to enjoy it. 

 

Believe me, I DO enjoy it. Thanks for the hard work and the explanation of the Time/Level requirements.

Randy

 

[Henri Spijkerman]

Al, Randy,

I remember now I had exactly the same trouble as Randy, even though root was the download location. I looked at the bashfile and

solved the problem by splitting it and using the command line, just like Randy did.

But it is worth it, great fun, great addition to Picochess!!

Henri

[Andy Baskett]

What does mame provide - it’s not something I’ve heard of?

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[Jochen Schoof]

Hi Randy,

I agree with your terminology, i.e. "/" is the root directory, "~" is each user's specific home directory and "/root" is the home directory of user "root" in Raspbian. Note that "~" yields different results depending on the user your are logged in as. If you are user "pi" then "~" is expanded to "/home/pi". If you are user "root" then "~" is expanded to "/root".

From your description I guess you are working as user "root" while Al's instruction assumes you are user "pi". Does that make sense?

-Joscho

[RandyR]

Hi Jochen,

Actually, I was logged in as "pi". For some reason, the bash script switched to root within the shell. I definitely ran it from the /home/pi/MAME-4-PicoChess/ directory and the first portion executed correctly. And after the script completed, I was still in that directory. I think it's because sudo is used inside the script which was itself run with sudo. It's just a hunch though.

Randy

[Manfred]

Hello Al,

thanks for the great work.

Manfred

[Scally]

Hi Randy & Jochen,

On my Raspbian system I don’t have /home/pi

I changed pi to Al and gave myself chown privileges so that I don’t need to use sudo for my commands, all this makes it much easier for me.

When I type cd ~/ it puts me in /home/Al as can seen here:

Al@PicoChess:~ $ cd ~/
Al@PicoChess:~ $ pwd
/home/Al
Al@PicoChess:~ $

So ignoring wether cd ~/ is the home, home/pi or root folder clearly bad naming by me, my instructions are there to make sure everyone clones my GitHub to the same folder that my Bash file looks in.

So typing cd ~/
Then cloning my GitHub repository to whatever folder that is, ensures that my AddMAME.sh Bash file uploads the files from the correct folder.

If you look in the Bash file you will see all my copy commands from that copy from my source are preceded cd ~/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/ ...etc this way we copy from the same folder/directory that we cloned to

Obviously If my repository was cloned to any folder then my Bash file couldn’t find these files and you get the ‘No such file or directory’ messages.

I could have just posted each command on a new line for you to cut and paste, but thought a Bash file would save time and be less difficult. I’m just trying to make it easier for all, that’s all.


Al.

[RandyR]

Understood, Al.

The repo does get downloaded to the right place (/home/pi in my case). It's just that the script, for some reason, switches the current directory from /home/pi to /root after the 'sudo mv -vn ~/mame_emulation/ /opt/picochess/engines/' command. I don't know why but suspect that it is switching from user pi to user root. I didn't use the chown command and left things as the default user pi. The script looks like it should work, and if you type the commands manually into the command line, all is good. But it doesn't. Perhaps it is the sudo's inside the script. Who knows?

Randy

[Torben Østergreen-Johansen]

Hi Al

This is fantastic news! Thanks a lot for sharing the mighty work done by you and Dirk!

I can not wait to get it up and running on my Pi :-)

Regards
Torben

[Santiago Torres]

Dear friends, I would like to know which module you are working on in order to get Mame working on picochess. Maybe this https://github.com/sronco/mame-chessengine. Thanks for your help. Regards.

[Scally]

Hi,

This was put on this thread and in the downloadable code:

* Copyright prevents us from telling you where to find the complete ROM set, so please don't ask. However should you find the ROMs you can legally use those of any Chess Computer you own, but please don't post the address

Al.

[RandyR]

Al/Dirk,

Is there a simple way to test a rom on Raspbian outside Picochess to see if it is working in mame/mess? The reason I ask is that one of the 'engines' freezes after selecting the level - I use +/- to change the level, but when I press the RH button the level display just remains on the clock and picochess seems to hang (I can't end the service for a while). The picochess.log stops recording entries.

Randy

[RandyR]

Standby. I think I figured out my problem....

Randy

[Dirk]

Yes Randy, you can call and check mame/mess like any other engine by calling it with the appropriate parameters:

eg. my very first chess computer the Chess Champion MK1 (ccmk1) ;-)

/your mess_path/mess -skip_gameinfo -lightgunprovider none -video none -plugin chessengine ccmk1

-lightgunprovider none was necessary during a time mess would crash on rasping when not setting it to none (for whatever reason).

Have fun with the old chess computers!

Dirk

[RandyR]

Thanks, Dirk.

That's good info. It's working now. I was missing a file. :^)

Randy

[Chess Lightning]

Hello.Can I play?

[Chess Lightning]

Hello.Xan I play?

[Eric Singer]

I'm experiencing a problem when using these engines.   I followed the installation steps and everything comes up fine and as long as I stay in book the engines respond.

When the book move end, there isn't any response at all from the engines, in the logs it just goes into this continuous loop.

2020-05-11 07:36:26.390   DEBUG      board - _read_board_message: (ser) board get [DgtMsg.DGT_MSG_BWTIME] length: 7

2020-05-11 07:36:26.392    INFO      board - _process_board_message: (ser) clock new time received l:(0, 0, 1) r:(0, 0, 0)

2020-05-11 07:36:26.393   DEBUG    display - run: received message from msg_queue: MSG_DGT_CLOCK_TIME

2020-05-11 07:36:26.394   DEBUG  picochess - main: received event from evt_queue: EVT_CLOCK_TIME

2020-05-11 07:36:26.395   DEBUG dispatcher - is_prio_device: (ser) clock connected: True

2020-05-11 07:36:26.395   DEBUG  picochess - main: setting tc clock time - prio: ser w:(0, 0, 1) b:(0, 0, 0)

2020-05-11 07:36:26.396    INFO timecontrol - set_clock_times: set clock times w:(0, 0, 1) b:(0, 0, 0)

2020-05-11 07:36:26.397   DEBUG    display - run: received message from msg_queue: MSG_CLOCK_TIME

Any thoughts on how I can fix this?

Thanks,

Eric

[RandyR]

Eric,
It looks like your Time setting is too low. Try setting the Game Time to 60 or 90 minutes. I found I had to do that or the clock would expire.
Randy

[Scally]

Hi,

Select ‘no book’ as it says in the README.md file. It also says to try to match Picochess time with the time in the selected engine, it doesn’t match this automatically.

Henri and me are working on improving the levels to show the correct time setting rather than level 1, level 2 etc. Of course if you own the engine you would have the instruction manual showing what the levels are.


Al.

[Eric Singer]

Hi Al,

I'm still having the no response issue after a few moves.

Here are all my picochess.ini settings.   Do you see anything amiss?

beep-some-level = 1

dgtpi = False

slow-slide = 0

log-file = picochess.log

log-level = debug

enable-setpieces-voice = True

pgn-user = Human

pgn-elo = 1100

web-server = 8080

ponder-interval = 5

speed-voice = 5

rolling-display-ponder = True

continue-game = True

engine-level = Level 3

engine = engines/armv7l/roma32

beep-config = some

language = en

enable-capital-letters = True

book = books/a-nobook.bin

computer-voice = en:christina

time = 5

Thanks,

Eric

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

The only setting missing is where your pgn-file is written, maybe it’s that?
This is the file that can be emailed to you after every game with the correct settings in picochess.ini

Here’s my settings:

beep-some-level = 0
dgtpi = True
slow-slide = 7

log-file = picochess.log
log-level = debug

user-voice = en:christina
computer-voice = en:al
speed-voice = 7
enable-setpieces-voice = True
pgn-file = games.pgn <<<<<<<<<<<
pgn-user = Scally
pgn-elo = 1650
ponder-interval = 4
disable-confirm-message = True
language = en
engine-level = 1-60/5m
engine = engines/armv7l/chesster
beep-config = some
time = 5 3
book = books/a-nobook.bin

rolling-display-ponder = True
continue-game = True

volume-voice = 8

+my email settings so I get the game emailed to me.

You may also want to switch your computer-voice to en:al 😇👍🖖


Cheers,

Al.

[RandyR]

Eric, it sounds like a bad install. Did you update Buster and install all prerequisite packages? Also, I had to execute the shell script manually as it failed in the middle (see earlier posts). Other than that, clock battery?

Randy

[Eric Singer]

Hi Randy,

I did install the prerequisite package,   I didn't notice any script failures when running the install.   I'm paired to my Rev II, so the clock battery can't be the problem.   It is running, but only for a few moves and then the engine stops responding and the clock just clicks down.

I'll try a different engine and see what happens.

Thanks,

Eric

[Dirk]

Hi Eric,

this problems sounds familiar to me if you either have an opening book set up (but you correctly did not) or -what seems very unlikely have a corrupt or a noon "picochess proven" init.lua.

As I would have n other idea and you already use no opening books please give this a try:

Replay your init.lua file with the attached init.lua file in your mame/mess emulation folder under /plugins/chessengine

Picochess needs a little modification in this file (compared to the original one by Sandro) which I had applied (and later Franz) to work correctly but if this modification is missing engine will stop after few moves (although the one in Al's repository should be correct).

Dirk

[RandyR]

Just to add, I did try the roma32 engine on level 3 and completed a game. Hopefully Dirk and Al can assist you.

Randy 

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

I get my Fibre upgrade Friday and have more Dropbox storage now, so I’ll knock something up next week if you’re still having problems.


Al.

[Eric Singer]

I was able to find the problem.  It was kind of a combination of problems.

In my picochess.ini file, I had this entry

engine-level = Level 3

which should have been 

 

engine-level = Level 03

If the roma32 cannot match the level, it will go into an infinite move time.

When I used the same incorrect level for rebel5, it goes to a short time for move.

Thank you for your help!

Eric 

[Dirk]

Oh that’s good to know and glad you figured it out, Eric.

Have fun!

Dirk

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[Shivkumar Shivaji]

I will try this out soon too. I had some difficulties and gave up due to lack of patience. Now I am motivated to try and debug properly this time! Awesome that it works, we should update github with the right ini file.

Shiv

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[Scally]

Hi Eric,

Ah that old chestnut. I remember now that Picochess hung when the engine and/or level didn’t exist. Back then the cure was to delete the engine name and level from the ini file, but it was cured by defaulting to Stockfish if that happened.

I guess that’s back with MAME, nice find. It’s easier sometimes to just delete the engine and level lines from the picochess.ini file if you have problems, these are written back to the ini file once selected on the clock.


Well done,

Al.

[Dirk]

Hinson,

Maybe we need to adjust the uci levels Songhai won’t happen again. Do we have leading 0 within some level settings?

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[Dirk]

Damn autocorrection - this was for Al ;-)

[Eric Singer]

Hi,

I decided to try copying over the chesster engine into my armv71 (with associated .uci file) and I added it to the engine.ini, however when I select it as an engine picochess stops working.

I must be missing a step.

Thanks,

Eric

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

You need an engine file (with permissions), the uci file, an entry in the engines.ini within the armv7l folder & and a rom file & a lua file in the appropriate places in mame_emulation.

All I can say without giving too much away is that the Rom files are not from the main ROMs folder, they’re in the MessChess folder.

Here’s the chesster engine files and an engine.ini example:

——-
Al@PicoChess:/opt/picochess/engines/armv7l $ cat chesster
#!/bin/bash

cd /opt/picochess/engines/mame_emulation; SDL_VIDEODRIVER=dummy /opt/picochess/engines/mame_emulation/mess -skip_gameinfo -lightgunprovider none -video none -plugin chessengine chesster
——-

Al@PicoChess:/opt/picochess/engines/armv7l $ cat chesster.uci
[S-40/2,5h]
speed = 0
level = a8

[1-60/5m]
level = a1

[2-60/10m]
level = a2

[3-60/15]
level = a3

[4-60/30m]
level = a4

[5-60/60m]
level = a5

[6-30/60m]
level = a6

[7-40/2h]
level = a7

[8-40/2,5h]
level = a8
———
From the engines.ini:

[chesster]
name = Fidelity Chesster
small = chesst
medium = F Chsstr
large = FidChesster
elo = 1900
levels = 9
ponder/brain = n

———


Cheers,

Al.

[Eric Singer]

Thank you Al.  I understand it more and everything's working

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hello,

I couldn’t wait any longer to give a try ... although my Linux skills are nil.

The install process was very smooth starting from a buster 2.01 Picochess version.

The current situation is that the sytem is starting up but I get frozen when drilling down in the clock menus (engine or book).

I must have missed a step. The engines including Ed’s might need to be installed in a further step?

Any tip would be welcome....

All the best,

Etienne

Le 13 mai 2020 à 17:25, Eric Singer <esin...@gmail.com> a écrit :



Thank you Al.  I understand it more and everything's working

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[RandyR]

Etienne,

You may want to edit your picochess.ini file and remove the engine and engine level lines. On first install, I noticed it was hanging looking for the previous engine, which no longer existed in the armv7l folder.

Randy

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hello Randy,

I have changed /opt/picochess/picochess.ini where some reference to Rodent were stil there and checking with Al’s earlier post....and din’t notice any exception but system is still freezing when navigating in the menu.

However the usual engines are still there in opt/picochess/engines/arm71PICO

A sub directory mame-emulation is also in the engines directory.

All the best

Etienne

Le 14 mai 2020 à 16:06, RandyR <randy...@gmail.com> a écrit :



Etienne,

You may want to edit your picochess.ini file and remove the engine and engine level lines. On first install, I noticed it was hanging looking for the previous engine, which no longer existed in the armv7l folder.

Randy

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[RandyR]

I had a similar issue when I was selecting an engine which I didn't have in the correct location. It was freezing as soon as I selected the Level. Perhaps you can set your log to Debug and see if it indicates any errors. Also, you can test the engine separate from Picochess by following Dirk's direction here.

Randy

[Scally]

Hi,

If you think it’s an engine or engine level related problem, remove both lines from the picochess.ini file.


Al.

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi Al,
Thanks for your help.
I did remove but it didn’t help.
My plan now is to get used to Pi and Picochess and will try again in a month os so as I am missing basic understanding of the system.
By the way I did set my Pi will Al’ voice rather than French...great.
All the best
Etienne


> Le 14 mai 2020 à 17:22, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hi,

>
> If you think it’s an engine or engine level related problem, remove both lines from the picochess.ini file.
>
>
> Al.
>

> --
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[Henri Spijkerman]

Hi Etienne (and others),

I confirm having the exact same problem. So nothing wrong with your understanding! No trace in the debug log either.

Henri

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hello,

I am reading again the thread and realize that I am missing amrv7l directory (there is the copy of orignal engines armv7lPICO plus a mame_emulation directory), could it be  be a wrong install process?

Cheers

Etienne

Le 14 mai 2020 à 18:24, Henri Spijkerman <hwspij...@gmail.com> a écrit :



Hi Etienne (and others),

I confirm having the exact same problem. So nothing wrong with your understanding! No trace in the debug log either.

Henri

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[Scally]

Hi Etienne,

The install works perfectly, the original git clone has to be to the ~/ folder (/home/pi)

There’s also a failsafe against running it more than once otherwise folders will be overwritten.

Can you look in /opt/picochess/engines:

cd /opt/picochess/engines

ls (small LS)

If folder armv7l-MAME-part exists, then copy it like so:

sudo cp -r armv7l-MAME-part armv7l

Then all should be well.

If it’s not there get back to me.

Al.

[RandyR]

Unfortunately, the script does not run perfectly. The clone goes into /home/pi, but the script ends up looking for it in /root. As mentioned previously, you need to run the shell commands manually, unless you make yourself (pi) part of the root group. I suspect this is what is happening for Etienne.

Randy

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi Al,
I have already started to re install carefully from scratch. We will see if the engine directory shows up otherwise I will do your advised fix and report tmr.
Thank you
Etiene



> Le 14 mai 2020 à 21:36, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hi Etienne,

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PicoChess" group.
> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to picochess+...@googlegroups.com.

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/picochess/e7223e07-fad3-44e4-84d2-4abc500673dd%40googlegroups.com.

[Henri Spijkerman]

Hi there all,

Haha, yes, the script.... Had a looong discussion about that with Al, and Al won. Here's the snag: make sure that 'MAME-4-PicoChess' AND 'mame_emulation' are BOTH in /home/pi then run the script from within MAME-4-PicoChess. Trust me, the script will work smoothly! :)

Henri

Op donderdag 14 mei 2020 21:49:34 UTC+2 schreef RandyR:

[RandyR]

Henri,

I think the issue with the script is that you are running it as sudo, but there are sudo commands inside it, but I never debugged it further after I did the manual install. The files were in the /home/pi/ folder as instructed but the script switches to /root when issuing the cd command. I suspect it worked for you because you just typed "./AddMAME.sh" without the sudo. 😋

Randy

[Scally]

Hi all,

I originally used sudo all the time. Then I created my own Al folder a copy of the pi folder and gave my folder and sub-folders the correct permissions so I didn’t have to use sudo any more.

My original bash file did not have sudo in it, so starting it via sudo should have worked. However some people complained that it didn’t work, so I added sudo within the bash script. With sudo inside the bash script there’s no need fo to start the bash script with sudo.

Anyway .....

Now that I’m changing over to Fibre broadband & have paid for more Dropbox space, I’ll be able to host images again. So soon I hope to have an image up which everyone can use. The standard Picochess engines will be the latest versions and I may add a couple more.

On my Buster system I can switch between Picochess versions and several Engine folders, so the image will be a snapshot of mine where you can switch backwards & forwards between v0.9n & v2.01 with the choice of 4 Engine folders via 1 bash file. It will contain the normal Picochess engines plus Lc0, Turing & the allowed MAME Engines.


Cheers,

Al.

[RandyR]

Thanks for all your work, Al. We all appreciate it!

Randy

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Good morning,
Now my old friend Rebel 5 is alive on Picochess! Thank you all!
I confirm that the install works perfectly for me as long as I don’t key sudo at the last step ./AddMAME.sh
The new image from Al will be a
RollsRoyce!
All the best,
Etienne

> Le 15 mai 2020 à 00:35, RandyR <randy...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Thanks for all your work, Al. We all appreciate it!
>
> Randy
>

> --
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[Eric Singer]

Here's a short video of my Picochess MAME setup.   I'm really pleased with how it all turned out.   This is the Fidelity Elite A/S Budapest emulation

https://youtu.be/GOKd8S9P1lU

Eric

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

Yes, it’s great isn’t it, I still have my original voice chess challenger.

I personally prefer to turn off the ‘OK Player’ & ‘OK Pico’ and have the notation in small letters, but hey each to their own ....


Cheers,

Al.

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi Al,
I have found some info in your earlier post on how to set up new MAME engines. I was up to transfer my ROMs to the rom directory by filezilla: is the pi/MAME-4-PicoChess/files/roms the right place? What procedure do you suggest as access is restricted?
Cheers,
Etienne

> Le 14 mai 2020 à 21:36, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>

> Hi Etienne,

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PicoChess" group.
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[Scally]

Hi Etienne,

Look at my answer to Eric on the 13th of May within this thread.

Al.

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi Al,
Yes this post was my starting point ...so I need to find a MessChess folder and put my roms in there..and of course make the appropriate settings..The Chess Challenger Voice was my first computer...I may hear his voice again...
Cheers,
Etienne


> Le 15 mai 2020 à 18:22, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hi Etienne,

>
> Look at my answer to Eric on the 13th of May within this thread.
>
>
> Al.
>

> --
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[RandyR]

Etienne, you'll need root access to the folder. I don't use Filezilla so not sure how you transfer files with it. But if you can get the files onto your RPi you can use the 'sudo cp' command to put them into the right folder.

Randy

[Eric Singer]

Nice, I didn't know about the ability to turn off the OK's.  I've now done that.   Which switch is for the small letters notation?

Is it this section?

## Displays messages with only capital letters. Doesn't work on DGTXL/Revelation II due to hardware limits.

## If so, please uncomment the next line.

# enable-capital-letters = True

Thanks,

Eric

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

Yes that’s the one, just comment it out #


Al.

[Scally]

Hi Eric,

Just a thought, but are you aware the Rev2 keys can be used as a DGT Pi, I have this blu-tac’d below my keys:

Al.

[RandyR]

Is there an elegant way to shut down mame? It seems to hang when using the 2 white queens method. Even killing the process seems difficult and stopping the picochess service seems to hang. Sudo shutdown -h now takes a while as well.

Randy

[Scally]

Hi Randy,

Unfortunately not. It needs patience, it does eventually stop or close. Even a reboot takes a while.

This is one of the problems I’m having when switching between engines, especially when the last set were MAME engines.


Al.

[RandyR]

Yes. Patience costs me many a game. 😁
I'll give it the time it needs from now on. Thanks guys.

Randy

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi Al,
As I don’t have any IT skills, I did ask childish questions...your install file is self explanatory on how ...the graal quest now...All the best and thank you for your patience,

Etienne

> Le 15 mai 2020 à 18:22, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>

> Hi Etienne,

>
> Look at my answer to Eric on the 13th of May within this thread.
>
>
> Al.
>

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Hi, I am getting closer ...but still have some stupid questions left...the sudo cp command to replace an armv7l by armv7l-MAME-wxw directory ends up with creating a sub directory within armv7l, that we don’t want. Did I use a wrong command (from the engines directory: sudo cp -r armv7l-MAME-xxx armv7l). As the pi is running this could be a permission issue? Can I rename the directories or should I copy the files? I don’ think I need to re install, right?
Thanks again for your great support,
All the best,
Etienne

> Le 16 mai 2020 à 16:35, Etienne Chaffanjon <etienne.c...@live.fr> a écrit :
>
> Hi Al,

> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/picochess/HE1PR07MB324399E69973265419798FB78EBA0%40HE1PR07MB3243.eurprd07.prod.outlook.com.

[Scally]

Hi Etienne,

If armv7l exists, then yes it copies within the existing armv7l

(The armv7l should have been renamed or moved first)
(This command would move it, as long as it’s not already been done)
(sudo mv -vn armv7l armv7lPICO)
(This ensures that your old engine file isn’t lost.)

However, look in your engines folder:
cd /opt/picochess/engines
ls

if armv7lPICO exists, then delete your armv7l folder:
sudo rm -rf armv7l
then copy the file where you think you went wrong:
sudo cp -r armv7l-MAME-xxx armv7l (where xxx is part of full)

If armv7lPICO does not exist then:
cd /opt/picochess/engines/armv7l
rm -rf armv7l-MAME-xxx (part or full)
cd ../
mv armv7l armv7lPICO
then copy the file where you think you went wrong:
sudo cp -r armv7l-MAME-xxx armv7l (where xxx is part of full)


If I’ve understood you correctly, then hopefully this should fix your issue.
If not, then don’t worry too much as I should have an image up but the end of the weekend.


Cheers,

Al.

[RandyR]

Etienne, stop the picochess program first:

sudo service picochess stop

Randy

[RandyR]

Also, edit your picochess.ini file before rebooting, to remove the engine and engine-level lines (assuming you start picochess automatically)

Randy

[Etienne Chaffanjon]

Fantastic!!! I am now back 30 yrs ago...this is amazing. And I did learn some basic Linux on the way...
Great thanks to the team,
All the best,
Etienne

> Le 16 mai 2020 à 19:45, Scally <scall...@gmail.com> a écrit :
>
> Hi Etienne,

> --
> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "PicoChess" group.
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> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/picochess/96327a54-c957-472d-a8b6-a71e5bd4cf87%40googlegroups.com.