Scid vs PC eboard support

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stevenaaus


There's some exciting news regarding Graham O'Neills eboard drivers. He's recently released versions of them where they operate as UCI engines, and using this, we've made some changes to ScidvsPC that enables good windows and also linux support. Basically, this now enables (supported) eboard games to be played/input in ScidvsPC, and also played against UCI engines and online with fics.

The code is now in svn, and also here as a windows gui update which can installed over the top of scid.gui in scidvspc-4.23
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/windows-beta/scid.gui-22012023.zip/download

Obviously this is a niche feature but hopefully some people will find it useful, and testing would be great. Below is the new help info.

cheers, Steven
-------------------------------------------------

Electronic Chessboards

Graham O'Neill has been releasing drivers for numerous electronic chess boards 

for a while now. At Graham's Chess page
 


https://goneill.co.nz/chess
 
https://goneill.co.nz/chess#linux


 you'll find lots of information, including Windows support for 
  
    Certabo 
    Chessnut 
    DGT 
    DGT Pegasus 
    Millennium 
    Novag Citrine 
    Novag USB 
    Saitek 
    Square Off 
 
 A subset of these are also supported in Linux. 
 
Basically, one installs the UCI Engine version of the appropriate driver from Graham's site and, by starting the driver using the Analysis Engines option, your eboard can now be used to enter chess games, play online with FICS, or against an UCI Engine. 
 
 This is a new feature and hopefully it will mature as we go. A huge thanks to Graham for his great eboard support and documentation. happy.png 

sangahm

This is exciting news.  Will try on my Millenium and Square Off boards and report back.

 

stevenaaus

Cheers... I posted a new gui today that allows the engine/driver to exit cleanly. It also has quite a few new features since 4.23 of course, as it's been a year or so of sporadic commits.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/scidvspc/files/windows-beta/scid.gui-28012023.zip/download

Gkfkfk

Nice

SEmbrey

Thank you for posting this!

stevenaaus

Hmmm - not many serious changes since 4.23. Might not release a new version in a hurry. Recent SVN Changelog:

  • Add a 'gameinfo' toolbar button.
  • Undo for clipbase copy and paste was kindof broken / leaky. And restructure sc_game_undo_reset.
  • Gamelist 'Copy to filter' context-menu/feature.
    Extend copy-to-filter to the best games. Hmmm
  • Add sanity checks for CC and CXX to configure.
  • Fix up the small engine board arrows for Xboard and multiPV.
  • Little colour theme change, and high DPI doco, from Aditya's wordpress blog ;>
  • Make big toolbar icons a proper feature.
  • Support for Graham's (UCI engine) eboard drivers.
  • Some edit-> menus were missing undo points.
  • Add clickable arrows to the small analysis boards to add moves (prev these arrows were broken).

 (Oh yeah, to use the new scid.gui - non-english users should grab their new lang file from here https://sourceforge.net/p/scidvspc/code/HEAD/tree/tcl/lang/ )

 

linuxchessman

Has anyone got graham o'neill's uci engine eboard driver working with linux (scidvspc) and a chessnut pro via the usb cable (not bluetooth).

Have tried for many hours with my debian 12 box without success. Followed all the instructions (udev rules, group membership etc), but simply cannot get it to work. When I select the 'chessnut engine' the 'Chessnut Control' window opens but without content and the program terminates without exit code. Hopefully something stupidly obvious I have missed?

darlihysa

Years ago casually I visited chess.com. i knew nothing about chess. Usin scid engine a scratched two or three opponents I cant remember. It had nothing to do with being proud or with elo career. Now I never use an engine against humans. It is hummiliating!!

linuxchessman

Not sure if this was in direct response to my post. I am talking about how to connect the chessnut pro eboard to a chess GUI (scidvspc in this case) under linux, to use it to enter moves rather than using a mouse. Not about using an engine to play chess/cheat.

stevenaaus
linuxchessman wrote:

Has anyone got graham o'neill's uci engine eboard driver working with linux (scidvspc) and a chessnut pro via the usb cable (not bluetooth).

Have tried for many hours with my debian 12 box without success. Followed all the instructions (udev rules, group membership etc), but simply cannot get it to work. When I select the 'chessnut engine' the 'Chessnut Control' window opens but without content and the program terminates without exit code. Hopefully something stupidly obvious I have missed?

I don't know much about it, and you've probably done this - but briefly, you'll have to install the Linux ENGINE version of the chessnut driver from LinuxUCI.tar.gz

https://goneill.co.nz/chess#linux

Anyway, I've found Graham to be a very helpful dev if you contact him directly.

https://goneill.co.nz/contact.php

Aspect1423

Cool