🚀 go-pugleaf

gnu.chess seems to be an ultra low traffic news group, but the stuff
that gets posted is generally interesting. Anyway, I thought I'd
answer the general questions about gnuchess, just in case nobody else
does.  I know I've been frustrated that way at times.

What is gnuchess?

Gnuchess is a very competive chess program (in terms of commercially
available programs for micros) written by Stuart Cracraft, mostly for
use as an experimentation tool/environment for researchers interested
in chess algorithms or computer problem solving in general.  Stuart
occassionally posts stuff here, but I think he stays pretty busy.  The
standard distribution works pretty well on a sun4, sun3, and probably
most Unix machines.  I don't have anything to do with it myself,
except for an occassional game of speed chess.


Where is gnuchess?

Here's a transcript of how to get it.  Note that I didn't actually
execute the get command in this transcript, since I didn't want to get
it again.

[1.131]puma) ftp prep.ai.mit.edu
Connected to prep.ai.mit.edu.
220 aeneas FTP server (Version 4.136 Mon Oct 31 23:18:38 EST 1988) ready.
Name (prep.ai.mit.edu:vaughan): anonymous
331 Guest login ok, send ident as password.
Password:vaughan

230 Guest login ok, access restrictions apply.
ftp> cd pub/gnu
250 CWD command successful.
ftp> binary
200 Type set to I.
ftp> hash
Hash mark printing on (1024 bytes/hash mark).
ftp> ls *gnuchess*
200 PORT command successful.
150 Opening data connection for /bin/ls (128.62.27.33,1755) (0 bytes).
gnuchess-3.1.tar.Z
#
226 Transfer complete.
remote: *gnuchess*
20 bytes received in 0.06 seconds (.33 Kbytes/s)
ftp> exit
?Invalid command
ftp> get gnuchess-3.1.tar.Z                        << didn't actually do this
ftp> bye
221 Goodbye.
[1.132]puma) uncompress gnuchess-3.1.tar.Z

and then you'd need to untar it something like this

tar -xvf gnuchess-3.1.tar

in a directory of your choice.  From there you can follow the
directions (I'm not saying that's easy, just that it can be done.)

Personally, I just play speed chess with it under Xchess (that comes
with the distribution), using commands like these:

xchess  -t 60/5 -h sunspot -v -p /net/puma/d0/vaughan/gchess/gnuchessr -c

to play white, and

xchess  -t 60/5 -b -h sunspot -v -p /net/puma/d0/vaughan/gchess/gnuchessr -c

to play black.  The -h sunspot accomplishes running the gnuchessr on a
remote machine.

 Paul Vaughan, MCC CAD Program | ARPA: vaughan@mcc.com | Phone: [512] 338-3639
 Box 200195, Austin, TX 78720  | UUCP: ...!cs.utexas.edu!milano!cadillac!vaughan