Certabo, Millennium and Novag (Citrine, UCB) drivers

[GONeill]

I have updated my drivers for the Certabo, Millennium Chesslink and Novag UCB boards and I have also added a Novag Citrine driver. These allow those boards to be used in Arena, LucasChess and Shredder. They are available on my web page and are already included in LucasChess from release 1.16.

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

The changes are:


** Certabo **

Misplaced pieces
During the New Game, New Position or Registration process the screen will now highlight which pieces are not in the correct position.

LucasChess take backs
From LucasChessR version 1.16 you no longer have to press the Takeback button after each pair of taken back moves. Now LucasChess will automatically update itself after you take back both the computer's last move and your own.

Improved display of take backs
When the LEDs are set to show only when the computer moves, or not at all, the display of the LEDs during take backs has been improved.

Log read errors
While I was attaching chips to my new pieces it was useful to see if the weights were affecting the board scanning. So I added this option to write any read errors to the program log file.


** Millennium Chess Link **

LucasChess take backs
From LucasChessR version 1.16 you no longer have to press the Takeback button after each pair of taken back moves. Now LucasChess will automatically update itself after you take back both the computer's last move and your own.

LED display choice
You can now choose to turn off the LEDs when it is your turn to move so that only computer moves are highlighted, or to turn off the LEDs completely. The latter is useful if you are playing a human vs human game and don't want to be distracted by LEDs.


** Novag Citrine **

I have now written a version of the UCB driver that controls the Novag Citrine board. This is included in LucasChess from release 1.16 or you can download it from my web page for Arena or Shredder. There is no need to use it in Arena if you only play games against engines as Arena has built in support for the Citrine, but if you use Arena to play online I'm told my driver is better. There seems to be a bug in Arena where the LEDs aren't displayed properly during online play, which isn't a problem with my driver.


** Novag UCB **

LucasChess take backs
From LucasChessR version 1.16 you no longer have to press the Takeback button after each pair of taken back moves. Now LucasChess will automatically update itself after you take back both the computer's last move and your own.

[mbabigian]

I downloaded LucasChess and it looks great!

I own a Certabo board and when using the Certabo software I get big delays using the Messchess engines (old dedicated computer EPROMS). Your GUI is so nice that I was wondering if there is any way to get those engines running under LucasChess.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

[GONeill]

I downloaded LucasChess and it looks great!

I own a Certabo board and when using the Certabo software I get big delays using the Messchess engines (old dedicated computer EPROMS). Your GUI is so nice that I was wondering if there is any way to get those engines running under LucasChess.

Thanks in advance,
Mike

Thanks Mike! I must first point out that LucasChess isn't mine - it's the work of Lucas Monge: http://lucaschess.pythonanywhere.com/. But you are right, it is a very good GUI for playing against engines. However I don't think it can run the ROMS as I think they all use the Winboard protocol rather than UCI, and I don't think Lucaschess supports Winboard. I might be wrong on that but I think it's correct.

One other option you have is to use the CB-EMU package from Franz Huber: https://fhub.jimdofree.com/. This includes a folder that runs the ROMs in Arena (...\CB-Emu\MessChess\Arena) and if you copy my Certabo driver into that folder as DGTEBDLL.dll then you can use the Certabo board there too. The PDF file in my download explains how to use my driver in Arena.

Having said that, your main problem seems to be the speed of the responses and I'm not sure anything can fix that. A lot of these old computers didn't have sensory boards and relied on the moves being typed in manually on a keypad. So the ROMs work by replicating the pressing of the keys which can take a few seconds. And in order for the ROMs to play at the original strength they are set to run slower anyway as hardware has improved a lot since then. So if you want a reasonably fast game stick to the engines in LucasChess (and there are lots of them!) and if you want a bit of nostalgia play with the ROMs and be prepared to wait!

All the best,
Graham

[mbabigian]

Thanks for the fast reply. I'll try the Arena trick with the dll and see what happens.

The delay I see when running the Messchess stuff is not due to the old emulated software. When I run the Certabo software with an old rom it brings up two boards (the winboard and Certabo gui). When the old software moves, sometimes the move appears on the Certabo gui (and board) in milliseconds (good), but many times it takes a few seconds or even 30 seconds or more. It appears the Certabo gui just doesn't see the move. Playing a blitz game this way is of course impossible.

Since the old software relayed its move to winboard 30 seconds prior (and that gui is updated) , the problem must be with the Certabo gui.

Thanks again for the tip. I'll give it a try later today.
Mike

[GONeill]

I've just released version 1.4 of the Certabo driver which adds support for the Certabo Bluetooth module. The download is on my web page and it will be included in the next version of LucasChess (R 1.18 I think).

No changes to the Millennium or Novag drivers for this.

Graham

[Jonathan003]

I would like to have support for Fritz form Chessbase. I have tried to connect my Millennium exclusieve board to fritz with this software but without succes. http://www.solanosoft.com/index.php?pag ... sslink-uci
It seems very complicated and I didn't manage to get it work.
I also would like to use my Chess Genius Exclusive board with Fritz to play training games where fritz warns you if there are interesting tactics to play, or if you have made a blunder. In that case I would still have to look the screen to see if there is in interesting tactics to play or if I made a blunder. This could be easily solved by using an audio signal in Fritz updates.

[Programmingbear]

Hi,

I have tried to connect my Millennium exclusieve board to fritz with this software but without succes. http://www.solanosoft.com/index.php?pag ... sslink-uci
It seems very complicated and I didn't manage to get it work.

in most cases the problem is caused by multiple available COM ports.
Is it possible to send me a log file?
The location of the log file and my email address is specified in the manual.

Lars

[Programmingbear]

Hi,

I have updated the UCI driver for Certabo and Millennium. The COM port detection should be better now.

Lars

[Jonathan003]

Thanks for the update.
I works to play a game now for me.
Would it be possible somehow to start a game in Friend mode in Fritz 17 using my Millennium exclusive board?
I want this option to use the option that Fritz is warning me if there is an interesting tactic to play for me.