Winboard Forum

Anthony Cozzie has been so kind to send me new versions of his programs Zappa.

Release notes:

1. Major bug in the book editor fixed; thresholding now works correctly.

2. Exactly the version that competed in CCT.

3. SHOULD work on Athlon CPUs. Should is the operative word here.

4. Definitely stronger than Zappa 0.8B2. I am not sure how much; my guess is 50 elo. But you guys would get bored without mysteries in life, wouldn't you? I am personally more interested in slow timecontrols, but feel free to test Zappa at any speed.

5. Consider this line an official request that Zappa be entered in any tournament available.

6. If config files show up in notepad without line breaks, open them with wordpad.

7. Have fun!

Additions from my side: the Athlon version still does not work on my computer. Please make sure the program is working for you before you download the large (13MB) book.

Thank you Anthony

Volker

http://volker-pittlik.name/zappa.html

The new(!) opteron version didn?t like to share the cpu with another chessprogram in analysemode and stops thinking on my Athlon 64 3800+.

The old 0.80b2 didn?t have this problem. I hope Anthony can fix this.

PS: GUI Arena 1.1

Anyway, a great day for chess.

Greetings
Thomas Lagershausen

Zappa 1.0 doesn't work for me on Pentium 3 installed as WB or UCI. Here is the Arena debug of the crash...

58379*1*Configured Engine 1 Type: WB2
58499*1*Engine 1 dir: C:\Arena\Engines\Zappa
58539*1*Engine 1 commandline: C:\Arena\Engines\Zappa\Zappa.exe
58705>1:xboard
58705>1:protover 2
59449<1: 66 [main] Zappa 672197 handle_exceptions: Exception: STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION
59452<1: 751 [main] Zappa 672197 open_stackdumpfile: Dumping stack trace to ZAPPA.EXE.stackdump

Regards
Dave

And here is the data in ZAPPA.EXE.stackdump ...

Exception: STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION at eip=004478B7
eax=00D48084 ebx=00000001 ecx=005AFEC4 edx=00000000 esi=00000001 edi=00D48084
ebp=008E7478 esp=008E7474 program=C:\ARENA\ENGINES\ZAPPA\ZAPPA.EXE, pid 684761, thread main
cs=016F ds=0177 es=0177 fs=42A7 gs=0000 ss=0177
Stack trace:
Frame Function Args
008E7478 004478B7 (005AFEC4, 004D22E0, 00000200, 008E74FC)
008E7498 0044206C (00000001, 00000001, 00000000, 00000000)
008EEE18 0044B5C7 (00000001, 00D40218, 00D400A8, 00000001)
008EEE88 61006145 (008EEEA0, 00000000, 00000000, 00000000)
008EFE08 61006350 (00000000, 00000000, 00000000, 00000000)
End of stack trace

Regards
Dave

David Dahlem wrote:Zappa 1.0 doesn't work for me on Pentium 3 installed as WB or UCI. Here is the Arena debug of the crash...

58379*1*Configured Engine 1 Type: WB2
58499*1*Engine 1 dir: C:\Arena\Engines\Zappa
58539*1*Engine 1 commandline: C:\Arena\Engines\Zappa\Zappa.exe
58705>1:xboard
58705>1:protover 2
59449<1: 66 [main] Zappa 672197 handle_exceptions: Exception: STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION
59452<1: 751 [main] Zappa 672197 open_stackdumpfile: Dumping stack trace to ZAPPA.EXE.stackdump

Regards
Dave

On this PIII no success either. Started under WinBoard Zappa writes this stackdump:

Exception: STATUS_ACCESS_VIOLATION at eip=00000000
eax=0022730C ebx=0022FFE0 ecx=00000000 edx=77F951B6 esi=00227334 edi=00000001
ebp=00227294 esp=00227274 program=D:\Sakk\WinBoard\Engines\Zappa\Zappa_10.exe, pid 776, thread main
cs=001B ds=0023 es=0023 fs=003B gs=0000 ss=0023
Stack trace:
Frame Function Args
End of stack trace

On my Pentium M - Notebook - both versions work without problems.

The Non-Cygwin (Athlon 64) makes about 260 kn/s in the starting positions whereas the Cygwin-Version (Athlon XP) makes only about 220 kn/s.


regards Joachim

hi volker,
i got the one for p4,works on winboard on my
2.53 ghz celeron D.
the large book would,nt unpack unknown file type.
using winRAR.
small book ok.
regards
mike

skoony wrote:hi volker,
i got the one for p4,works on winboard on my
2.53 ghz celeron D.
the large book would,nt unpack unknown file type.
using winRAR.
small book ok.
regards
mike

Hm, but it is a zip file. Unpacking works fine here.

Volker

In my PC with Intel Pentium III, Zappa 1.0 does not work either.

Here is the zappa stuckdump:
Exception: STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION at eip=004478B7
eax=00D47FC4 ebx=00000001 ecx=005AFEC4 edx=00000000 esi=00000001 edi=00D47FC4
ebp=008E7478 esp=008E7474 program=C:\WBRD\P-Z\ZAPPA\ZAPPA10.EXE, pid 643977, thread main
cs=017F ds=0187 es=0187 fs=1A07 gs=0000 ss=0187
Stack trace:
Frame Function Args
008E7478 004478B7 (005AFEC4, 004D22E0, 00000200, 008E74FC)
008E7498 0044206C (00000001, 00000001, 00000000, 00000000)
008EEE18 0044B5C7 (00000001, 00D401F8, 00D400A8, 00000001)
008EEE88 61006145 (008EEEA0, 00000000, 00000000, 00000000)
008EFE08 61006350 (00000000, 00000000, 00000000, 00000000)
End of stack trace
------------------------------------------------------------
Furthermore here is the winboard.debug:

recognized 'normal' (-1) as variant normal
WinBoard 4.2.7 + Zappa10
Reset(1, 0) from gameMode 0
recognized 'normal' (-1) as variant normal
GameEnds(0, (null), 2)
StartChildProcess (dir="c:\wbrd\p-z\zappa") Zappa10
930 >first : xboard
protover 2
Fatal Error: Error writing to first chess program:
Ha terminado la canalizaci?n.

990 <first : 119 [main] Zappa10 279885 handle_exceptions: Exception: STATUS_ILLEGAL_INSTRUCTION
990 <first : 564 [main] Zappa10 279885 open_stackdumpfile: Dumping stack trace to ZAPPA10.EXE.stackdump
Fatal Error: Error: first chess program (Zappa10) exited unexpectedly
GameEnds(0, (null), 2)
4170 >first : force
4170 >first : quit
---------------------------------------------- :

That is all folks
Pablo

OK, I'm just a tool. I'm using the mfence coherency instruction, and that requires SSE2. Well, I was never convinced it was necessary anyway, so we'll try taking it out and see what happens. The update will also fix the Zappa book so that it plays 1.e4

Thomas: Zappa doesn't send UCI infos unless it gets a new PV, so maybe you just need to wait longer. It sets its priority low so that it doesn't hog the CPU and your mouse still moves; you can turn this off with nice 0 in the options I believe.

anthony

OK, we have a new version without mfence, as soon as Volker mirrors my copy. Lets see if that helps . . .

anthony

Anthony Cozzie wrote:OK, we have a new version without mfence, as soon as Volker mirrors my copy. Lets see if that helps . . .

anthony

I can't connect to your ftp site (see email too). Maybe you can sent me the Athlon version by mail. I have a perfect test environment here:).

Volker

Anthony Cozzie wrote:OK, we have a new version without mfence, as soon as Volker mirrors my copy. Lets see if that helps . . .

anthony

Hi Anthony

I'm confident you'll get things working and make everyone happy.

Meanwhile, i do have one question about the zappa ini file. Are all the settings in zappa.ini, except for hash settings of course, the same settings Zappa used in CCT7? This ini file seems confusing to me, since it appears some search options that should make for stronger play are not enabled. For example, this entry for null move ...

#Turn null move pruning on/off
#enable_null_move 0

Regards
Dave

Heheh, I forgot to turn on the ftp server again after I rebooted I guess you'll just have to wait until I get back from work and can turn it on, which probably means tomorrow for Volker.

David: # means comment. Null move is on by default.

anthony

Anthony Cozzie wrote:
David: # means comment. Null move is on by default.

anthony

Thanks for the clarification.

Regards
Dave

David please explain were to get this working version of zappa the FTP Adress ???

David Dahlem wrote:

Anthony Cozzie wrote:
David: # means comment. Null move is on by default.

anthony

Thanks for the clarification.

Regards
Dave