Scid vs PC(Mac) and Stockfish & Critter

Ok, I"m not the smartest person, but I'm also not the dumbest one either.

I've download and installed Scid vs Mac and I can't figure out how to "attach" Stockfish and Critter to it.

Anyone willing to help me out?

Sorry, I can't answer for the Mac version, but maybe the Windows version is similar?

In Windows, click TOOLS - ANALYSIS ENGINES. 
From the Configure Engine popup window, Click NEW. 
Enter the name of the engine. 
Click the BROWSE button and locate the engine's EXE file. 

Basically, that's it.

Wow, I should have figured that out myself...

Thanks!

This worked for me for a while, but after about a week, I started getting an error message: Analysis engine terminated without exit code ""

I can't configure the engine, either . Something about a pipeline that can't be flushed.

Anyone have any ideas? Other than installing Windows on my Mac ?

Have you fixed this problem ? A pipeline flush fail sounds like something non-trivial.

Stevenaaus at yahoo dot com

I have no experience with Mac, but have a fair amount in hooking up a chess engine (Stockfish, Critter, etc) to a Windows program I wrote.  In Windows (probably Mac too), the chess engine runs in separate process and a pipeline (interprocess comunication) is set up between the engine and the program (in your case, SCIDvMac).  If the engine quits for some unexpected reason, or if the process is shutdown for some reason (by the OS, say), SCID will detect it and give you the "engine terminated" message.  When SCID shuts down, or before, it will try to flush the pipeline, which no longer exists because the engine process has terminated.  Stockfish and most engines are very finicky and shutdown if they do not like the position passed (e.g. if white to move, but black is in check; no kings on the board, etc, etc).  If your SCID does not do the appropriate audits before calling the engine, you will get this problem.  I know because I found out the hard way on my PC program.  So, my suggestion is to try another engine and see if it is more forgiving, or track down why the engine is quitting:  Is there some reason why your Mac is killing the engine process (or did you inadvertantly kill it)?  Is there something strange about the game in the SCID db that has an invalid move/position that is being passed on to the engine?  I know that SCID (and maybe SCIDvMac) has a community newslist and the developers can answer questions like this.  Try and post it in that forum (if there is one). Good luck.

Haha. I *am* the dev

You're probably right. The "pipeline flush" error is probably just caused by the engine crashing - for whatever reason.