Winboard Forum

Hi all,

When I try to run Scorpio 1.9 using José, I get the error message 'unknown command random' and the engine is restarted. Next time I get 'unknown command post'. What do I do wrong?

It does the same under Windows.

Gábor Szots wrote:Hi all,

When I try to run Scorpio 1.9 using José, I get the error message 'unknown command random' and the engine is restarted. Next time I get 'unknown command post'. What do I do wrong?

Jose is a has a bit buggy Winboard Protocol support. You could try wbtouci and see if it works under uci.

I don't think it is Jose's fault. Probably Scorpio has some problems with the XBoard protocol.

When I run the engine, it behaves strangely. It seems to load and start analyzing normally, but if I input one move, it stops analyzing. If I switch to "Edit mode" and then to "Analysis Mode" again, it starts analyzing again.

I tried running XBoard in debug mode (see below).

Scorpio is analyzing. I input a move (c1h6) and Scorpio throws an error (unknown command: ze). Incidentally, the word 'analyze' ends in 'ze'. If I switch to Edit Mode and then to Analysis Mode again, then Scorpio takes the command 'analyze' correctly and begins analyzing.

AnimateMove: piece 2 slides from 2,0 to 7,5
19483 >first : c1h6
19556 <first : nodes = 1000001 <87 qnodes> time = 3.56 nps = 281215
19557 <first : lazy_eval = 52 splits = 0 badsplits = 0
19557 <first : hit rate for tables: mht = 19 pht = 96 eht = 25
19558 <first : Error (unknown command): ze
19938 >first : .
19938 <first : Error (unknown command): .
21259 >first : exit
21260 >first : force
37920 >first : analyze
37997 <first : 2 -598 0 895 Bf8-b4 Nb1-c3
38009 <first : 2 -598 1 1385 Bf8-b4 Nb1-c3
38017 <first : 3 -549 2 1738 Bf8-b4 c2-c3 Ke8-g8 c3xb4 g7xh6

I would contact the author, only I can't find his e-mail anywhere.

PS: I also get the two unknown command messages you mentioned at startup.

PS2:I can play human against Scorpio and other engine against Scorpio without problems.

Thanks for the replies. Yes, it seems it has nothing to do with platform, it is a Scorpio-WinBoard communication problem. (E.g. no problem using Arena).

Hello all
An engine has the option not to support some winboard commands. Scorpio doesn't understand the "post" and "random" commands from winboard. I doubt that any winboard engine except gnuchess supports the "random" command. Scorpio's winboard support looks ok to me. Many GUI's like Shredder, Chessbase have a buggy winboard support because of some misunderstandings/ assumptions made of the protocol. I am not saying this is the case for Jose also but you shouldn't dismiss the possiblility.

To christos:
Yes scorpio's command when reading input during analysis is a little buggy. But I don't think this causes a problem at all. The way it works is that whenever the user types anything other than the "." command it stops analysis and reads moves or any other command. Yes it displays some error messages but this doesn't affect anything. I will correct that today/tommorrow with some other fixes. Thanks! BYW email is dshawul at yahoo.com.

regards
Daniel