OpenChess

Hi All
After 5 long years of saving and planning I finally purchased a DGT board and am thrilled beyond words.
However after a few days of testing and moving around (we are all kids in some ways yet ) I am facing some strange problems like missing pawns and intermittent disconnections which get resolved by reconnecting manually and/or refreshing the link or by juggling the pawns around till I get the full board setup correctly in F12.
I want to know from other members who might have had similar experiences or heard about these symptoms so that I could be assured that its typical or not.
On a sidenote when F12 or F11 abrubtly loses the connection the DGT controller window withe the Chessboard still shows the chess positions correctly, so it seems like a F12 related driver problem,
And it works almost flawlessly in Blitzin so I am inclined to think its a Software related problem?
Any advice or suggestions is greatly appreciated
I'll be using the DGT only on the 17th morning so might not be able to take immediate action
Thx to all friends and well-wishers here

Hi,

Sorry that I am just now reading your post. I too own a DGT set and I also love it. Just a few basic questions for you. Have you downloaded the latest drivers?

http://digitalgametechnology.com/site/i ... egory.html

Or are you running it from the software that came with your DGT set?

Which version of Fritz 12 are you using (Service Pack)? What Operating System are you using?

Hi friend,

I have a DGT with love also. I usually play with it two or three times a week in ICC with blitzin and have noted the same problem, but it occurs so rare that I dont worry about (maybe 1 of 20 games or so). Never thought about it, I have a few suggestion:

- do you connect the usb wire to a usb hub? does it has power supply? Sometimes this kind of problems are due to improper power. Also try it in another computer to see if yours is dont supply the correct one (althought it would be strange).
- contact with DGT, maybe they can show you how to solve it.

keep us informed....

regards,
fs

Lostark wrote:Sorry that I am just now reading your post.

fserrano wrote:I have a DGT with love also.

No Problem Ted and Fserrano. Happy to meet someone who has the same interests.

fserrano wrote:I usually play with it two or three times a week in ICC with blitzin and have noted the same problem,

Well on the contrary I am not facing any problem in Blitzin-WoodIn interface !

fserrano wrote:do you connect the usb wire to a usb hub? does it has power supply? Sometimes this kind of problems are due to improper power. Also try it in another computer to see if yours is dont supply the correct one (althought it would be strange).

I too had the same doubts so I tried what you suggested and found that sometimes a different USB gives better performance.

Ted Summers wrote:Have you downloaded the latest drivers?

The drivers were old (1.46) so I had them replaced (1.49) and now it is far better than before, though I have not tested it thoroughly since I was away for my son's tourney. I will do it now and report any anomalies.

Ted Summers wrote:Which version of Fritz 12 are you using (Service Pack)? What Operating System are you using?

Updated to May 24th 2010...and Win 7 - x64.

A new development is that in Playchess server I got a warning message that "Cheating will lead to account termination" when I used the DGT board and this was reported in the help channel but I am still awaiting further help from them. So I want to inform other DGT users about this phenomenon.

And the last say is that it really works like a charm in Blitzin-Woodin interface so I am thinking of renewing my account there...

Thanks to all you friends here who shared my joy

Regards
Lostark

Hi,

I also own a DGT board and have some small issues with it (i'm a very happy owner however)

At the beginning, i had some issues with pawn being hardly detected on some squares. After getting in touch with the support team, they sent me a tool enabling to flash the board (USB version) with a new gainlist. The gainlist is a kind of sensitivity table enabling to tune and make some squares more sensible... With it, i've been able to tune the board so it detected the pawn and pieces very well on every cases !

Other issues i had where mainly on playchess (used through the Fritz 12 interface on a Vista with UAC activated machine). My driver was 1.49 and i experienced a crash at system exit.
(Should be resolved by this version according to release notes). The DGT team released recently a new version (1.50) which still have this issue (at least for me)

Other issue is that sometimes, the moves are not taken into account (despite the driver is loaded and the position it shows in the small window), especially if i play several games in a row without quitting playchess between them. This is still the case with version 1.50

I then started to write a "customized version" of the DGT driver : the API (Application Programming Interface) of the DGT driver is published on their website. I then wrote a DLL with the same name and same API so it can be loaded seemlessely by client software like Playchess and so on. In uses the native DGT library at the end but may add some custom behaviour in the loop.
I especially added some code to reset/reload the library on new game setup and it seems to prevent the problem when playing several games in a row. I also added some stuff to have the referee whistle when trying some illegal move (you need to have Fritz12 or playchess software installed in the standard directory so that sound files can be found)

To have this working, you should go to your C:\Program Files\DGT Projects directory then create a subdirectory named dgtebdll (not sure if it exists at the beginning) and then copy the original DGTEBDLL.dll to nativeDGTEBDLL.dll in this directory. (make a backup copy of the original one or rename it with .original extension)

Then replace the DGTEBDLL.dll file with the one in attachement of this post in the following places :

C:\Program Files\Common Files\DGT Projects (the one used by playchess clients)
C:\Windows\System32 (not seen sofware using this copy)
C:\Program Files\DGT Projects (used by DGT Board tester for example)
C:\Program Files\ChessBase\Devices\DGTEBDLL.dll (outdated version provided by playchess but not even used !)

If you try it, please tell me if it helps or change things for you.

Regards,

Mathieu

PS : to upload the file, I had to change it's extension, so rename the attached file in DGTEBDLL.dll

small updates (the native DGT DLL was loading twice in a row on new game)...
I saw that some people did download the file... can i have your feedbacks please ?

Matioupi wrote:At the beginning, i had some issues with pawn being hardly detected on some squares. After getting in touch with the support team, they sent me a tool enabling to flash the board (USB version) with a new gainlist. The gainlist is a kind of sensitivity table enabling to tune and make some squares more sensible... With it, i've been able to tune the board so it detected the pawn and pieces very well on every cases !

Thanks Matioupi...That was a revelation !
Is it possible to have that tool uploaded for people like me facing the same problems? Thx in advance!

Matioupi wrote:Other issues i had where mainly on playchess (used through the Fritz 12 interface on a Vista with UAC activated machine). My driver was 1.49 and i experienced a crash at system exit (Should be resolved by this version according to release notes). The DGT team released recently a new version (1.50) which still have this issue (at least for me)

Do you get any cheat warnings in playchess like me (those red messages in the chat box)??

Matioupi wrote:Other issue is that sometimes, the moves are not taken into account (despite the driver is loaded and the position it shows in the small window), especially if i play several games in a row without quitting playchess between them. This is still the case with version 1.50

And specifically in the CB interfaces for me !!!

As for the modified work as I ll let you know in a few days about the results.
Thx for your inputs Matioupi

Regards
Lostark.

Is it possible to have that tool uploaded for people like me facing the same problems? Thx in advance!

The file is too big to be uploaded here... I put it here : http://dl.free.fr/pTfjJpW52 where it will remain if there is one download every 30 days at least...

There is a short instruction manual included... It forgot to say that after each flashing operation of the the new gainlist, you have to unplug and replug your board to reset it and let it use the new gains.

A sample gainlist file is included, it is a text file (edit it with notepad like software), there is somewhere inside the file a little ASCII drawing that shows the index of each square on the board... Don't forget to make a copy of the original file and use your own copy for flashing...

Don't modify the other values than the one matching the squares gain values or you could damage the board !

Each time you notice on or some weak square(s) on your board, decrease the gain value of these square by one unit (decreasing the value increase the sensitivity)

Do you get any cheat warnings in playchess like me (those red messages in the chat box)??

I never had theses...

For the other points, I'm only using the playchess server, so I don't know if the issues exists with other services... The behaviour within the new Fritz 12 interface is Ok, the only bad point being the crash on exit...

However, while investigating, I really think that the bad behaviour with playchess is related to playchess client software (a good clue is that it works very well with Fritz). It then seems very difficult to correct these without playchess team intervention...

For me, the main symptom is that sometime, moves stop being considered by the playchess client. This is mostly when I play several games in a row, or accept a new game offer.
Sometimes, playing the first move on the screen with the mouse unlock the behaviour, but sometimes not...
While looking at what happens (running the DLL in debug mode to spy the calls) I can see that the WhiteMoveEvent and BlackMoveEvent are correctly emitted, but seems no to be considered by the playchess client...

I already informed Playchess support, but they didn't give any answer... Maybe if more people do, they will consider solving this issue...

Regards,

Mathieu

I also have a question....

There should be a the highlighted squares feature that should present the squares that are not matching the position as seen by the client software (fritz for example) on the small drivers window.

Here, this feature does not work (with Fritz 12) is it the same for you ?
(on Vista OS)

Regards,

Mathieu

hi Matioupi

A few doubts:

First - regarding the modified file that you gave ... are you sure that it is the DGTEBDLL.dll file ?
My doubts are based on two facts- one is that it is way too small - 93 kb -than the original one -1364 kb - and another fact is that DGT does not work after replacing the files (of course with necessary backups in case of malfunction ). Therefore I had to restore the original files to make it work.

I suppose it could be the DGTEBDLL.lib file that has to be replaced (since it is somewhat similar in size) ?

Waiting for your clarifications

Best Regards
Lostark.