Mephisto MM IV/MM V as Winboard engine

[Alexander Schmidt]

Since some time it is possible to emulate the MM IV and MM V on your PC and use it as Winboard engine for example under Arena. Everything you need for that is available in the net.

I have never seen a message here about that. Is someone interested in details?

[fern]

Absolutely. tell us how...

Fern

[beachknight]

I also want to know how it is done.

Plus: How to connect DOS Engines on to Arena or WinBoard?



Best,

[Kurt Utzinger]

Since some time it is possible to emulate the MM IV and MM V on your PC and use it as Winboard engine for example under Arena. Everything you need for that is available in the net.

I have never seen a message here about that. Is someone interested in details?

If you were not Alexander Schmidt I would say you are yoking.
Regards
Kurt

[Alexander Schmidt]

Nice to see some are interested in something else than "it".

I waited for some response because it took me an hour to collect all this stuff, and I didn't want to do it in case noone here is interested.

No Kurt, it's no joke. It works, and it will play the same moves as your modules

OK, here we go.

• Download the MMIV/MMV emulator from the Rebel homepage, It's called MessGUI: http://www.top-5000.nl/index.htm
• Then download the updated MessGUI 1.34b from the Arena pages, in the left menu go to Newsticker (No. 188): http://www.playwitharena.com/
  You can also find some information about the project there
• Then extract both in an own folder
• Go to MessGUI 1.2 (the one from the rebel site), and copy the content of the rom folder into the rom folder of MessGUI 1.34 (the one from Arena)
• rename the file in the \rom\mm4 folder, from mephisto4.rom to mm4.bin (In MessGUI 1.34, the one from Arena...).
• Now you can chose the mestiny.exe in the main folder of MessGUI 1.34 (the one from Arena) as a winboard engine.
• Add the commandline "mm5 -nommunlimited" or "mm4 -nommunlimited" to emulate the MM 5 or MM 4

This will emulate the original modules, with the original timecontrol at original speed.

It will take a while until it responds. If your GUI sends the first move too fast it will maybe not work. Under Arena be patient, it should work. The MM IV emulation responds a little bit faster

Chose a original timecontrol like 40moves in 120 minutes or 10seconds/move

Open the Arena Debug Window to see some details:

589.343-->1:level 40 120 0
589.343-->1:new
589.343-->1:random
589.343-->1:level 40 120 0
589.405-->1:post
589.405-->1:hard
589.405-->1:easy
589.405-->1:ping 10
589.437<--1:LE 6
593.531<--1:PLAy

Here you can see the emulator switches to level 6 (40moves/2h)

You can find manuals of the modules here: http://www.zanchetta.net/echecs/

This are the original timecontrols of the MM IV, I think they are the same for the MM V. You have to chose one of this timecontrols, 180s/moves will for example not work though it is the same as 40m/120min.

Level 1 - 5s/move
2 - 10s/move
3 - 20s/move
4 - 1min/move
5 - 2min/move
6 - 40m/120min
7 - 6min/move
8 - 12min/move

If you want to run the modules as fast as they can go on your hardware and with a (not original) timemanagement for all timecontrols remove the commandline option "-nommunlimited"

There are also some wb2uci files included. I had some problems with them so better try to use the Winboard variant. If you want to try the UCI versions don't forget to edit the wb2uci.eng. Maybe you wnt to remove the mmlog option there, the logfile becomes quite big after a while.

I hope I didn't forget something, feel free to ask here if you have problems and include the debug window please

Have fun

[Alexander Schmidt]

Plus: How to connect DOS Engines on to Arena or WinBoard?

With Auto232, but I have no experience with that

[lmader]

I would be very interested to know what kind of performance increase is possible for these engines running at PC hardware speeds (that is, by removing the commandline option "-nommunlimited"). If someone does some testing, please post your results.

[F.Huber]

I would be very interested to know what kind of performance increase is possible for these engines running at PC hardware speeds (that is, by removing the commandline option "-nommunlimited"). If someone does some testing, please post your results.

If you understand German - here's the original website (forum) where this Mephisto emulator was developed:
http://www.schachcomputer.info/forum/sh ... 48&page=35
On this page and the following ones you find a few additional informations.

[Engin]

Hello,

the download link for the emu is wrong, corrected this with

http://www.top-5000.nl/dl/dedicated.zip

[Michel]

I would really like to run psion chess in xboard. Is it possible?

I know it is a dos program with its own gui but I am hoping that someone
knows how it stores its moves in memory. Then one can modify dosbox to implement the WB protocol.