Steve B wrote:when you sit down to play against it.. they will come and rub up against either you or the Citrine
if you play..they will come
My Cookie Cat can be quite persistent with interfering with reading, keyboarding, or any other activity when she needs attention. As with the other cats, my technique is to divert her attention with something like a can of tuna or a laser pointer.
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One minor drawback of using LEDs on a square's vertices is that when two squares that are orthogonally separated by one intervening square are highlighted, then the intervening square also appears highlighted.
It's hard to see why Novag is still using an RS-232 interface when most PCs have gone without for five years or so. (Macs haven't had one in ten years.)
2) The pieces are nicely styled, although perhaps about ten percent on the small side. There's no need for a substitute set unless one is very particular on this issue.
3) When executing a capture, the moving piece must be lifted prior to lifting the captured piece. This is the opposite of what I'm used to doing.
4) The side mounted menu button must be pressed and held for activation; a light touch is insufficient. This may be a safety feature, or maybe mine needs some work.
5) The detachable LCD display has only a very short cable. It's certainly possible to make a longer cable, though.
6) The unit's connection ports for the LCD unit and the adaptor plug would have been better positioned so that the two corresponding cords wouldn't cross in normal deployment.
7) The PC interface serial cable terminates with a female DB-9 connector, so it should connect directly to a regular male DB-9 RS-2323/USB converter. I haven't tried this yet.
Here's a game at game/60 minutes time control. The Citrine had the misfortune of being out of book at move three in a closed position.
Symbolic offered a classic two rook sacrifice that the Citrine wisely declined. But it was too late anyway, and the Novag resigned at move 33. The position was played to mate just for testing purposes.
I've found an undocumented feature on the Citrine; the LCD informational scroll includes what I believe is a nodes per second display. The value hovers around 4,500.
sje wrote:
I've found an undocumented feature on the Citrine; the LCD informational scroll includes what I believe is a nodes per second display. The value hovers around 4,500.
yes thats correct
i also cant stand the piece movement procedure
as to piece sizes..they seem about right to me except for the pawns which are waaay to small
as i posted earlier in this thread there is a long thread on the Hiarcs forum mentioning these and other issues
it should be noted that the Citrine is the only new wooden auto sensory to be released in over 10 years
one thing i am curious about Steve
try giving the Citrine the black pieces
play a game until you are out of book for about 3-4 moves
then take back a move for the Citrine
what happens?
on some of the earlier released versions the computer would lock up or freeze and a reset was necessary
I'll have to try to trigger the (possible) take back bug when I get the automated interface running; manually fiddling with the pieces gets to be tiresome and also can introduce operator errors.
According to posts form a number of sources, Novag has revised the Citrine at least once. Who knows what revision I might have?
I note that the Citrine wooden "board" us actually a decal. But it's a nice decal.
I can get used to the capture movement sequence. I think that the LED flash/non flash order for to-square/from-square should have been reversed.
The LCD unit is easily read -- when placed at the correct angle. I use a bit of folded cardboard as a prop.
There is absolutely no useful mention of the PC interface in the included documentation, although there is some on the Novag web site. I need to do some exploring.
In this game, the Citrine had a strong space advantage for about forty moves. Too bad it had to grab a poisoned pawn and walk into a nasty pin on move 45.
When the Citrine resigns, its LCD shows "rESiGn". Seeing this is sweet revenge for all the times Kittinger's earlier program in the Super Constellation kicked my butt.
