connect to winboard AND still have the console?

[sluijten]

Is there a way to have your engine connected to winboard (windows) and still have a console window open for extra I/O? E.g to be able to change engine settings while playing, or display extra output.

[hgm]

What is wrong with changing the engine settings through the WinBoard dialogs?

[sluijten]

I am still on 4.2.7 seems I need an upgrade
Can the engine send auxiliary output (like statistics of the search) to 4.5.2?
Thanks.

[hgm]

Indeed, 4.2.7 qualifies as 'stone age'.

4.5.2 allows the engine to print info messages to the Engine Output window, provided it disguises it as Thinking Output, with the numeric parameters for score, time, nodes all 0. You have to give the same depth as the previous line of Thinking Output, though, because WinBoard will clear the Engine Output window whenever it receives a line of lower depth than the previous one (assuming a new search was started). So sending

20 0 0 0 Any message you want to appear

would do the trick. (WinBoard should suppress the printing of the zeros.)