Timeseal is a program that has been developed to improve chess on internet. Netlag often causes players to lose valuable seconds or even minutes on their chess clocks. Transmission time is counted against you, unless the chess server can tell exactly when information is transmitted. What timeseal does is record your thinking time, so that transmission time is not counted against you. Timeseal will not prevent netlag but it makes the games fairer when lag occurs.
What you need to do is get a version of timeseal working on the computer that connects you to the chess server. The timeseal program will work as a relay station, and will keep track of transmission times.
To see if anyone of these may fit the hardware you are using, do "uname -a" in your unix shell and see which unix system you have operating. Then, determine whether you need one of the special Windows or SOCKS versions.
(1) Login to your unix/inet provider. (VAX/VMS not supported yet). Type "uname -a" and remember the output. You will need this output to figure out which version of timeseal will work on your system.
(2) Get the corresponding Timeseal binary from the WWW www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de
Or you can Ftp it from ftp.daimi.aau.dk daimi.aau.dk
(3) Type "chmod 700 filename", and "mv filename timeseal". These various commands make the timeseal program available on your operating system. NOTE: There are times when using "chmod 700 filename" does not work on your system. In this case, try "chmod 755 filename".
Here is an example after you have the version called timeseal_SUNOS
chmod 700 timeseal_SUNOS mv timeseal_SUNOS timeseal
Now you are ready ... to go to the next step. ;-)
There are different procedures depending on which interface/system you are using. If you use Xwindows +Xboard / xics, then go to A); if you have winsock, then go to B); otherwise go to C).
A) For Xwindows users, there are two methods (listed in order of preference). Whichever approach you use, make sure that xboard and timeseal are in the same directory. Use one or the other -- NOT BOTH!
(1) Use this command (it is the more direct, simpler approach):
./xboard -ics -icshost 194.109.20.8 -telnet -telnetProgram timeseal
(2) Executing "./timeseal 194.109.20.8 5000 -p xxxx &" causes timeseal to bind itself to port xxxx and wait for a connection to the chess server. Then you can start xboard / xics like this (remember to exchange xxxx with a valid port number, like 5500, 5501, whatever you like):
./xboard -ics -icshost localhost -icsport xxxx
./xics localhost xxxx
You MUST use the string "localhost". Do NOT write the chess server host because then timeseal will not be on. "localhost" is a perfectly valid address since it's aliased to 127.0.0.1 (loopback) which always means the machine you are using.
B) There are two steps: INSTALL and USE:
INSTALL: Move the file tmseal.exe to the same directory as your client program. Create a program manager icon for TMSEAL, using the normal methods. (Select File|New from the program manager menu; click on New Program Item, then in the dialog set the Directory field to the same directory as above; set the command line to TMSEAL; you may check the Run Minimized checkbox if you wish.)
USE: Double-click on the TMSEAL icon before beginning your FICS session. Then, in your client program, connect to "localhost" instead of the usual "dics.dds.nl". Soon the usual logon messages will appear. Errors if any will show up in the TMSEAL window.
C) For other users (no xboard, no winsock) such as ziics, jiics, E-ICS, etc:
Modify your interface configuration to replace the normal telnet command with: "./timeseal 194.109.20.8 5000".
note: the above mentioned is an example on how to connect to DICS you can substitute the IP adress in order to make it work with other FICS 's.
DONE!
Questions? Ask channel 1 or an admin.
C.C.Cafe | Index | D.I.C.S. | Events | Feedback |