Re: On-line engine blitz tournament September

Modern Times · Post by **Modern Times** » Thu Oct 15, 2026 10:05 pm

Happy to see that I'm not going mad and you guys have replicated the problem!

Joost Buijs · Post by **Joost Buijs** » Thu Oct 15, 2026 11:04 pm

Modern Times wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 10:05 pm Happy to see that I'm not going mad and you guys have replicated the problem!

I saw it happen once in the game against Cheng, I totally turned off timeseal [G] pings now because we saw in the server log that the problem occurs when a ping is being send right before the message that Winboard seems to miss. The old server didn't ping, so this can be the reason that we didn't had this problem in the past.

Bart Weststrate · Post by **Bart Weststrate** » Fri Oct 16, 2026 8:40 am

Modern Times wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 10:05 pm Happy to see that I'm not going mad and you guys have replicated the problem!

As we speak Selate played 2 long games against PlentyChessRB without any problem. I use a custom interface (build by Claude) which is working ok now. Fixed some quircks with unexpected character for end of line. @Joost also auto-accept is fixed, also was an end of line thingie.

Edit: apllied a filter on the raw input from the server:

Done. Summary of the change in fics_client.py's _read_loop:

- Added a single normalization step — self._buf.replace(b"\r\n", b"\n").replace(b"\n\r", b"\n").replace(b"\r", b"\n") — applied to the whole accumulated buffer right after each chunk arrives, before any line-splitting happens. This collapses every CR/LF variant this server has thrown at us (reversed \n\r, bare \r used as a glue boundary) into one canonical \n.

mar · Post by **mar** » Fri Oct 16, 2026 9:09 am

Joost Buijs wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2026 8:33 pm Indeed, now I saw it happen here as well. On the server the game is drawn. We suspect that Winboard has a problem with the time-seal ping, I will add a patch for it tomorrow morning.

cool!
hgm pls fix

Modern Times · Post by **Modern Times** » Fri Oct 16, 2026 10:06 am

I've played maybe 20 games now after the server timeseal fix went in without any problems, so I think things are OK now unless that affects other GUIs !

jshriver · Post by **jshriver** » Fri Oct 16, 2026 10:23 pm

I will be releasing icsdrone-rs 2.1.11 shortly. It's a mild bug fix. It sends kibitz as a kibitz command rather than a whisper. This way the opponent can see it not just observers.

Been running it off/on all month and even with timeseal v1 implemented not having any more issues. Recommend trying if having winboard issues. Doesn't hurt and it's another option out there. Why I developed it

-Josh

PS. Ray, just played against PlentyChessRB and worked well. Good luck tomorrow everyone.

Modern Times · Post by **Modern Times** » Fri Oct 16, 2026 11:52 pm

No idea how to install or use your Josh, it looks complex. Anyway as you say, the server change has fixed the Winboard issues, it works perfectly now as it did before on the old server.

jshriver · Post by **jshriver** » Sat Oct 17, 2026 12:12 am

Modern Times wrote: ↑Fri Oct 16, 2026 11:52 pm No idea how to install or use your Josh, it looks complex. Anyway as you say, the server change has fixed the Winboard issues, it works perfectly now as it did before on the old server.

No problem, can just download from here https://github.com/jshriver/icsdrone-rs ... ag/v2.2.11

Copy the example config.json and edit it to your engine. Primarily your engine binary, username, password, and polyglot book if you have one. I'd recommend setting the GUI to Yes. From there it's should be relatively easy and can sit back and watch or issue manual matches as you wish. If you have any questions feel free to ask. I will be there tomorrow as well participating with my engine.

-Josh