For general news and information about chess, try the newsgroup hierarchy rec.games.chess.*, especially the groups rec.games.chess.misc and rec.games.chess.computer. Both of the latter groups have very informative FAQs maintained by Steve Pribut; look for them on the newsgroups or at http://www.clark.net/pub/pribut/chess.html.
Like other GNU software, you can get XBoard, and WinBoard by anonymous FTP from ftp://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/ and its many mirror sites. Look in the subdirectories xboard, and winboard. The .tar.gz suffix on the files there indicates they were packed with tar and compressed with gzip. The .exe or .zip suffixes indicate files that were packed and compressed with zip.
For other chess software, try the Internet Chess Library. Use anonymous FTP to connect to ftp.freechess.org, or go to the Web page http://www.freechess.org/. You can get chess software, game collections, the FAQ file for rec.games.chess, and other chess-related material there, in the directory pub/chess. The FTP server can automatically decompress files for you as you download them, useful if you don't have gzip.
Here is a sample anonymous ftp session. Some of the ftp server's responses are abbreviated, but all the commands you must type are included.
% ftp ftp.gnu.org Connected to ftp.gnu.org Name: anonymous Password: your-email-address@your-site ftp> binary 200 Type set to I. ftp> cd /pub/gnu/xboard ftp> dir -rw-r--r-- 1 14910 wheel 393119 May 20 00:25 xboard-4.0.7.tar.gz ftp> get xboard-4.0.7.tar.gz 150 BINARY connection for xboard-4.0.7.tar.gz (393119 bytes). 226 Transfer complete. ftp> quit
If you are using Unix, run the "script" program, run XBoard with the -debug flag (if you get as far as running it), do whatever is necessary to reproduce the problem, type "exit" to the shell, and mail us the resulting typescript file. We also need to know what hardware/operating system combination you are using. The command "uname -a" will usually tell you this; include its output in your typescript.
If you are using MS Windows, run WinBoard with the -debug flag, and send us a copy of the WinBoard.debug file. If you aren't sure how to add command-line flags to WinBoard, you can hit Ctrl+Alt+F12 to create a WinBoard.debug file after WinBoard starts, but that is not as good, because a few messages that would have been printed at the start are lost.
Either way, please send us the exact text of the commands you typed and the output you got, not just your recollection of approximately what they were. The messages may seem meaningless to you, but they are very meaningful to us and essential for diagnosing problems.
There is currently no mailing list for the XBoard/WinBoard project. You can send mail directly to mann@pa.dec.com (Tim Mann).
Chess engines that will run on your machine and play a game against you or help you analyze, such as GNU Chess and Crafty (topic [D.3] below).
Chess servers on the Internet, where you can connect to play chess with people from all over the world, watch other users play, or just hang out and chat.
Correspondence chess played by electronic mail. The cmail program (topic [B.6] below) automates the tasks of parsing email from your opponent, playing his moves out on your board, and mailing your reply move after you've chosen it.
The Web and your own saved games. You can use XBoard as a helper application to view PGN games in your Web browser, or to load and save your own PGN files.
XBoard runs under Unix or Unix-compatible systems. It requires the X Window System, version X11R4 or later. There are also ports of XBoard to Microsoft Win32 (that is, Windows NT or Windows 95) and to the Amiga. See topics [B.2] and [B.3] respectively.
The WinBoard distribution includes a port of GNU Chess to Win32. The GNU Chess port is distributed in executable form, with instructions for rebuilding it from the standard GNU Chess sources (available separately). You should have at least 16 to 24 MB of memory to run GNU Chess with WinBoard.
The WinBoard distribution also includes the ICC timestamp and FICS timeseal programs (topic [B.12]).
cmail (topic [B.6]) has not been ported to Win32. All the other XBoard functions are included in WinBoard.
You install WinBoard as follows. Download the WinBoard package to your PC (see topic [A.2]). It will be a file with a name like winboard-4_0_0.exe. Double-click on this file in the Explorer or File Manager to run it. Follow the on-screen prompts.
The current version of AmyBoard is 330.5 (based on XBoard 3.3.0). No one is currently maintaining it.
System requirements:
If you would like to use an ICS, you need an Internet connection via either
AmyBoard is available in the Internet Chess Library (topic [A.2]).
Next, decide what directory tree you are going to install XBoard in. The default is /usr/local, but you probably don't have write access to that directory unless you are a system administrator. If you do, type the following to install it there:
gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd xboard-*/
configure
make
su
make install
If you want to install xboard in your personal home directory ($HOME/bin),
type this:
gzip -cd xboard-*.tar.gz | tar -xvf -
cd xboard-*/
configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
If the first step above fails because you don't have gzip, see topic [A.2], and ask a local Unix expert if you need more help. If you have any problems with the last two steps, read the READ_ME and INSTALL files in the xboard-*/ directory. You will also find this FAQ there.
You don't need to have gcc to build XBoard, and your C compiler doesn't have to be ANSI-compliant.
Instructions on how to get started with Internet chess are included with the XBoard distribution. The network addresses included in the XBoard distribution may not always be current. The oldest and largest ICS is the Internet Chess Club at chessclub.com, which now has a fee for registered use, but still allows free unregistered use. There are also many newer sites with no fees, using the Free Internet Chess Server implementation (FICS). Some current FICS sites are freechess.org (the most active) and eics.daimi.aau.dk. On all these machines, the port number to use is 5000.
Note: If you don't have network connectivity to any ICS site, you can run your own server using the FICS code. You can get a copy by anonymous ftp from the Internet Chess Library (topic [A.2]). The code is changing rapidly, so send mail to chess@freechess.org and/or log into the FICS server at freechess.org and ask the administrators there for current information.
The cmail program included with XBoard lets you play email postal games with another human; see topic [B.6].
Two humans can play chess on the same machine using one copy of XBoard in Edit Game mode, but the clocks don't run in this mode, so it's of limited usefulness.
See also topic [D.2], Winsock Chess.
WinBoard runs well on both Windows 95/98 and Windows NT.
- Add the following line to the file .mime.types in your home directory. (Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
application/x-chess-pgn pgn
- Add the following line to the file .mailcap in your home directory. (Create the file if it doesn't exist already.)
application/x-chess-pgn; xboard -ncp -lgf %s
- Exit from your Web browser and restart it.
2) On MS Windows systems:
The exact procedure depends on which Web browser you are using. The current version of WinBoard automatically configures itself as your PGN viewer for local files, Netscape 4.x, and Internet Explorer.
In Netscape 3.x, go to Options / General Preferences / Helpers, click the button to make a new MIME type, and fill in the boxes:
Mime type: application Mime subtype: x-chess-pgn Extension: pgn Application command line: "C:\Program Files\WinBoard\WinBoard" -ncp -lgf "%1"Change the pathname for WinBoard if you installed it in a different directory.
3) To confirm that your external viewer configuration is working, open the following URL and click on any of the game names shown: http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Tim_Mann/chess.html#PGN
If you are in a completely ordinary situation, where your machine is directly on the Internet and you can connect to ICC or FICS without timestamp/timeseal using just the command "xboard -ics" or "xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org", change that command to one of the following:
xboard -ics -icshost 207.99.5.190 -icshelper timestamp
xboard -ics -icshost 164.58.253.13 -icshelper timeseal
If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic [B.19].
If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on xboard to log into a second machine, and then telnet to ICC or FICS from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp or timeseal on the second machine. (If the second machine is not running Unix, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not protected against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for lag caused by heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help files on ICC and FICS.
If you select an ICS from either the WinBoard Startup dialog or the Windows Start submenu that WinBoard installs, WinBoard automatically runs timestamp or timeseal if the ICS you chose is known to support it.
If you are constructing a WinBoard command line by hand, add the option "/icshelper timestamp" or "/icshelper timeseal" to the WinBoard command line to use timestamp or timeseal. Both timestamp.exe and timeseal.exe are included in the WinBoard distribution. They both function identically to the Unix versions, as documented in "help timestamp" on ICC and "help timeseal" on FICS.
If you have a firewall between your machine and the ICS, see topic [B.19].
If you normally have to use the "/icscomm" command line option on WinBoard to log into a shell account, and then telnet to ICC or FICS from there, you are going to have to run the Unix version of timestamp or timeseal on the shell machine. (If the shell account is not on a Unix machine, you are out of luck.) Get the appropriate version of timestamp or timeseal onto the shell machine via FTP; see the help files on ICC and FICS for instructions. Then simply run it when you would normally run telnet. In this configuration you are not protected against lag between your PC and the shell machine, or for lag caused by heavy load on the shell machine itself from other users.
For further information on timestamp and timeseal, see the help files on ICC and FICS.
XBoard and WinBoard can display only one board at a time, but you can observe your partner's game by running a second copy of the program and logging in as a guest. (Unfortunately, this is not possible if you are using the /icscomm option.) To observe your partner's games automatically, use the "follow" or "pfollow" ICS command; see the ICS online help for details.
Using a computer to choose your moves on a chess server is considered cheating unless your account is on the computer (C) list. Read "help computer" on your favorite server for details on their policy. Most of the servers have plenty of computers running now, so they will not be excited about having you run a new one unless you have written your own chess engine. They don't really need yet another Crafty or GNU Chess clone.
For documentation, see the file engine-intf.html, included in both distributions or available from my chess Web page, http://www.research.digital.com/SRC/personal/Tim_Mann/chess.html. The version of engine-intf.html on my Web page is often more up-to-date than those in the XBoard/WinBoard distributions.
WinBoard is currently developed using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0. You can build the program from the MSVC++ GUI by opening the project file (winboard.dsp) and telling MSVC++ to build the project. You can also build it from the the command line by using the nmake program supplied with MSVC++.
To build WinBoard with the free Cygwin tools, available from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/), use the command "make -f cygwin.mak". WinBoard 4.0.7 is known to compile with Cygwin BL20.1 and the result appears to work correctly, but it has not been extensively tested.
To build WinBoard with Borland C++ 4.5, use "borland.mak", supplied with the WinBoard sources, as the Makefile. Support for Borland C++ was contributed by Don Fong and has not been tested by the author of WinBoard.
WinBoard is a Win32 application, so you definitely need a compiler and tool set that supports Win32. In particular, older versions of DJGPP can build only 32-bit MSDOS programs; that is, programs that use a DOS extender to get a 32-bit address space and do not make any Windows calls. The latest versions of DJGPP are said to be able to build Win32 programs when used with the proper extension package(s), but this is not known to work with WinBoard. Use Cygwin instead.
See also topic [C.16].
There is no single answer to this question, because there are many different kinds of firewalls in use. They work in various different ways and have various different security policies. This answer can only provide hints.
Note that you can't access Internet Chess Servers through a Web proxy, because they are not a Web service. You talk to them through a raw TCP connection, not an HTTP connection. If you can only access the Web through a proxy, there may be a firewall that stops you from making direct TCP connections, but there may also be a way through it. Read on for hints, and contact your local system administrator if you need more information about your local configuration.
If you are using WinGate, I don't know how to use WinBoard with it. WinGate seems to be a very complicated program, and I don't have time to get a copy and find out enough about how it works to help people who use it. If you know how to use WinBoard with WinGate, please send an explanation to mann@pa.dec.com so that it can be included in a future version of this FAQ.
If you are using some other non-SOCKS firewall, read the FIREWALLS section in your XBoard or WinBoard documentation (man page, info document, or Help file). If you can telnet to a chess server in some way, then you can almost certainly connect to it with xboard/WinBoard, though in some cases you may not be able to run timestamp or timeseal. The timestamp and timeseal protocols require a clean, 8-bit wide TCP connection from your machine to the ICS, which some firewalls do not provide.
If you have a SOCKS firewall and are using XBoard, you should be able to SOCKSify xboard and use it. See http://www.socks.nec.com/ for information about SOCKS and socksification. However, if you do this, you can't use timestamp or timeseal; what you really need is a socksified version of timestamp or timeseal. This is hard because the source code for timestamp and timeseal is proprietary; the folks running the chess servers don't give it out because that would make it too easy to cheat. On some versions of Unix, you may be able to socksify a program that you don't have the source code to by running it with an appropriate dynamic library; see http://www.socks.nec.com/. For others, you might be able to get a pre-built socksified version from the chess server administrators. For timeseal versions, see ftp://ftp.freechess.org/pub/chess/timeseal/. For timestamp versions, the directory would be ftp://ftp.chessclub.com/pub/icc/timestamp/, but at this writing there don't seem to be any socksified timestamps there. Once you have a socksified timestamp or timeseal, simply run it with a normal, non-socksified xboard in place of the standard timestamp or timeseal.
If you have a SOCKS firewall and you are using WinBoard, we now know how to make this configuration work, complete with timestamp or timeseal!
Start by getting SocksCap32. This software is freely available from http://www.socks.nec.com/. Install it on your machine, read the documentation, and learn to use it. You may find it useful with many other programs besides WinBoard.
Next, don't socksify WinBoard. Socksifying WinBoard itself doesn't let you use it with timestamp or timeseal. For some reason I don't understand -- something strange that SocksCap32 does -- the socksified WinBoard runs but does nothing, and timestamp/timeseal runs all by itself in its own window.
Instead, use the following workaround. Follow the instructions exactly; don't try to skip steps or simplify things.
First, make SocksCap32 application profiles for timestamp and timeseal. Use the following command lines in the SocksCap32 profiles. Name the first profile "timestamp" and the second "timeseal".
"c:\program files\winboard\timestamp.exe" chessclub.com 5000 -p 5000 "c:\program files\winboard\timeseal.exe" freechess.org 5000 -p 5000
Second, run timestamp or timeseal by itself, socksified, using its profile. This will open an unneeded, black window that will not respond to typing. Minimize it to the task bar and ignore it. It will go away when you exit from WinBoard.
Next, run WinBoard using the following command line. Make a shortcut or type this command into an MS-DOS Prompt box. Don't run WinBoard itself socksified, just run it directly.
"c:\program files\winboard.exe" /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
After you get this working, you can try getting the timestamp window to auto-minimize by starting it from a shortcut instead of from the SocksCap32 control window. As it says in the SocksCap32 help file, put the following in the Target field of a shortcut's Properties page:
"c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestampThen select "Run: Minimized" on the same page. Do the same for timeseal.
Another method that can work is to use a .bat file to start both timestamp and WinBoard. It would look something like this:
REM -- REM -- icc.bat REM -- Start timestamp under SocksCap32 and use WinBoard to connect to it. REM -- The string "timestamp" refers to a SocksCap32 profile for timestamp. REM -- Do not change it to the filename of the timestamp program! REM -- start /minimized "c:\program files\sockscap32\sc32.exe" timestamp cd "c:\program files\winboard" winboard /ics /icshost=localhost /icsport=5000
This workaround has a problem if you want to run two copies of WinBoard at once, talking to the same chess server twice (for bughouse) or to two different chess servers. If you need to do that, you will need to run a separate copy of timestamp with a different port number for each connection. You'll need to make a second set of profile entries with a different value after the -p flag (say, 5001) and you'll need to change the WinBoard command line /icsport=5000 for the second WinBoard to match.
I believe chess.net provides a Win32 command-line version of accuclock that will work with WinBoard. Please see the documentation on the chess.net server itself; don't ask the author of WinBoard.
I don't know whether chess.net provides versions of accuclock for Unix at this time. Ask them.
By default, Zippy automatically sends the command "gameend" to ICS at the end of each game. You can alias this command (using the ICS "alias" feature) to anything you want. On ICC, you can use the "multi" feature to alias gameend to several commands, but other servers don't have that feature. Zippy doesn't send anything at the start of the game by default.
You can get Zippy to send one or more commands of your choosing, at the start and/or end of each game, by using the -zippyGameStart and -zippyGameEnd command line options, newly added in version 4.0.3. Both xboard and WinBoard have (somewhat obscure) ways of getting newlines into this option to send several commands. Here is an example of one way to do it for each.
xboard -ics -zp -xrm "*zippyGameStart: say hi\nsay prepare to die\n"
WinBoard /ics /zp /zippyGameEnd="say thanks\nseek 5 0\nseek 2 12\n"
For general information on getting missing X sources, see the FAQ on comp.windows.x. Note that you may be missing only the header files, or you may be missing the libraries themselves too.
HP-UX users are missing only the header files. You can get them by anonymous FTP as follows. (But first check with your system administrator to see if someone else at your site has already done this.) Get the archive file /hpux9/X11R5/Core/Xaw-5.00.tar.gz (Xaw header files) via anonymous FTP from the site hpux.csc.liv.ac.uk (138.253.42.172), or one of the other official sites---Germany: hpux.ask.uni-karlsruhe.de (129.13.200.57), US: hpux.cae.wisc.edu (144.92.4.15), France: hpux.cict.fr (192.70.79.53) or Netherlands: hpux.ced.tudelft.nl (130.161.140.100). Unpack the archive using gzip and follow the instructions in its README and/or HPUX.Install files. Thanks to Richard Lloyd for this information.
If you have the Xaw header files installed in a different place than the other X11 headers, you may need to configure XBoard with an extra flag to help it find them. For example, if yours are in /foo/bar/X11/Xaw, try this:
rm config.cache
(setenv CFLAGS -I/foo/bar ; configure)
Also see topic [C.2].
The configure script for XBoard looks for X libraries and header files in some common places. Sometimes it fails: If yours are installed in an odd place, it may not find them at all. If you have more than one version of X installed on your system, it may find the "wrong" one, or occasionally it may find libraries from one version and incompatible header files from another. You can work around these problems by telling the configure script where the files are. For example:
configure --x-includes=/odd/place/include \
--x-libraries=/odd/place/lib
The directory named in the argument to --x-includes must have a subdirectory "X11" that contains the actual .h files. That is, if your X.h file has full pathname /odd/place/X11R6/include/X11/X.h, then you must give the argument --x-includes=/odd/place/X11R6/include.
Some linkers have bugs that cause bogus error messages when you try to link X programs. The configure script includes a workaround for a bug of this kind that exists in some SunOS 4.x.x installations. See the FAQ on comp.windows.x for more information about problems of this kind.
If all else fails, check whether anyone else at your site has been able to compile any X programs on your system. Your X installation might be buggy. If so, the system administrator at your site might know how to fix or work around the problem.
Also see topic [C.1].
Some people want to connect to ICS through HyperTerminal or some other terminal program first, then run WinBoard. This is not how it works. WinBoard wants to talk directly with your modem, acting as a terminal program itself. Start out with the modem "on hook" (not making a call).
Run WinBoard with a command line like this (adding more options if desired):
WinBoard /ics /icscom com1
Use com2, com3, or com4 in place of com1 if your modem is connected to one of
those ports.
After you start WinBoard, you may need to change some of the options in the Communications dialog (on the Options menu). The dialog has the usual options for talking to modems: bits per second, bits per byte, parity, number of stop bits. You will probably want to use Save Settings Now when you're done.
Next, type dialing commands to your modem in the text window that WinBoard creates. You may need to turn off Local Line Editing on the Options menu while you are typing commands to your modem. Turn it back on when you're done. See the WinBoard Help file for instructions if you see your typing echoed an extra time after you hit Enter.
Microsoft TCP/IP works with both 16-bit and 32-bit applications, supports SLIP, PPP, Ethernet, etc., and is included with Windows 95. If possible, I recommend that you uninstall whatever Winsock you are using and install Microsoft TCP/IP instead. For more information, see http://walden.mo.net/~rymabry/95winfaq.html (the Win95-L FAQ).
Trumpet Winsock 2.1 (and earlier) supports only 16-bit applications, and hence does not work with WinBoard. But there is a beta-test release available that does support 32-bit applications. I have not tried it with WinBoard, but it should work. See Trumpet's Web page http://www.trumpet.com.au/wsk/winsock.htm for more information.
The 16-bit versions of America On-Line's software do not support 32-bit Winsock applications. Get the 32-bit version. At one time the 32-bit version was called "AOL for Windows 95," but I imagine that has changed. Hopefully the latest versions are all 32-bit.
A few versions of Winsock may have bugs that prevent Windows timestamp/timeseal from working with them. I'm not sure if such bugs exist in any versions that actually have 32-bit support, so this point might be moot. Again, Microsoft TCP/IP is known to work.
This message means that WinBoard is trying to run GNU Chess, but GNU Chess cannot find a file that it needs, named gnuchess.lan. If you see it, you've probably customized WinBoard's /fcp, /fd, /scp, and/or /sd options and made a mistake in the process. Review what you did, and see the WinBoard help file.
With XBoard, you have to set the mode using command-line options. Local chess engine mode is the default, -ics selects ICS mode, and -ncp ("no chess program") selects standalone mode.
With WinBoard, if you don't set the mode using command-line options, you get a dialog box asking which mode you want. To bypass the dialog box, use -cp ("chess program") for local chess engine mode, or -ics or -ncp as with XBoard. Also see topic [C.7].
There are many ways; pick your favorite:
If you are using Crafty, be certain to get the version compiled for Win32 (wcrafty.exe), not the version compiled for MS-DOS (crafty.exe). Also, be sure you have the current version of WinBoard. WinBoard 3.4.1 and earlier had a bug that caused this problem to occur with all chess engines.
This problem is reported to still happen occasionally, for unknown reasons. You can generally stop the rogue Crafty by pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del, selecting the Crafty process from the menu, and pressing the End Task button.
If your or your opponent has netlag, your opponent might appear to get extra time, especially if your opponent is using timestamp or timeseal. The ICS charges each player who is using timestamp or timeseal only for the time between when the player received his opponent's move and the time he sent his own move. Thus delays in network transmission do not count against either player. But WinBoard counts down the display of your opponent's clock on your screen under the assumption that there is no netlag. When his move comes in, if there was netlag, the ICS may not have really charged him for that much time, and WinBoard corrects the clock to what the ICS says it should read.
If you are not using timestamp or timeseal, you may appear to lose time off your clock at some point after you make your move. In this case, the ICS charges you for the time between when it sent you your opponent's move and the time it received your move. Thus delays in network transmission count against you. WinBoard stops counting down the display of your clock on your screen (and starts your opponent's) when you make your move. When the ICS echoes your move back to you, it may have charged you for more time than that, and WinBoard corrects the clocks to what the ICS says they should read.
See "help lag" and "help timestamp" or "help timeseal" on your ICS for more detailed information.
Most people don't have this problem, but two or three people using Windows NT 4.0 with Service Pack 3 or 4 have reported it. I have no idea what causes this problem. Contrary to what was reported in a previous version of this FAQ, reinstalling the service pack after installing WinBoard does not seem to solve the problem.
The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The copy included with XBoard 4.0.2 was generated by lex on Tru64 Unix and has problems compiling and linking on current GNU/Linux versions. The copy included with XBoard 4.0.3 was generated by flex on a GNU/Linux machine, but it too won't necessarily work on other versions of Unix. If you have this problem, you can fix it by deleting parser.c and letting the Makefile re-create it from parser.l. This will work if you have either lex or flex on your system. Flex is available in all GNU/Linux distributions and can be obtained at no charge from the Free Software Foundation, www.fsf.org.
The file parser.c is automatically generated from parser.l. The Makefile included with the WinBoard source kit has a rule for generating parser.c using the program "flex", which will fail if you don't have flex. However, the source kit also includes a ready-made copy of parser.c, so you don't really need flex unless you have made changes to parser.l. Check that you still have a copy of parser.c; if you don't, unpack the WinBoard source zip file again to get one. Either set the last-modified time of parser.c to be later than that of parser.l, delete parser.l, or comment out the Makefile rule for building parser.c from parser.l, and then try building WinBoard again.
If you do want to change parser.l and rebuild parser.c, you can get flex as part of the free Cygwin kit from http://sourceware.cygnus.com/cygwin/. You can probably also get flex for Windows by itself from various other places around the Internet. It is free software distributed by the Free Software Foundation, www.fsf.org.
After connecting to a chess server, XBoard 4.0.2 and later sends an escape sequence to its terminal that is meant to display your handle and the ICS host name (for example, "user@chessclub.com") in the terminal's banner and icon. It seems that several of the alternative X terminal programs have a bug that makes them hang when sent this escape sequence.
You can work around the problem by using xterm, nxterm, rxvt, aterm, xiterm, or gnome-terminal, all of which seem to work fine. In fact, current versions of kterm and konsole seem to work fine too, so if you are having problems with one of them, be sure you are not running an outdated version.
Alternatively, you can disable this feature by commenting out the body of DisplayIcsInteractionTitle in xboard.c and recompling xboard.
This can happen if you have a bug in your Windows display driver. Check with the manufacturer of your display card, the manufacturer of your computer, or Microsoft to see if there is an updated driver available. You can usually download updated drivers from the Web.
If you can't find an updated driver, you can try running Windows using a different number of colors and/or disabling some of the hardware acceleration features on your display card. To change the number of colors, go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings / Color Palette. To disable hardware acceleration features, go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / Display / Settings / Advanced Properties / Performance / Hardware Acceleration.
It's also possible that Windows has the right driver for your hardware already but you are not using it. It may help to reinstall your driver. Go to Windows Start / Settings / Control Panel / System and delete your display card (maybe even your monitor too), then reboot. Windows should automatically re-detect your card and monitor and re-install the drivers; if it doesn't, run Start / Settings / Control Panel / Add New Hardware to force it to.
If all else fails, try Monochrome mode. On WinBoard's menus, go to Options / Color and check Monochrome. WinBoard will display in black and white.
This message means that your chess engine crashed, probably due to a bug in the engine, or because you have it configured incorrectly. You can try running XBoard or WinBoard again with the "-debug" flag on the command line. This will print out all the messages received from the chess engine.
If you are using GNU Chess and you see this problem as soon as it starts up, most likely GNU Chess is exiting with an error message. If you see the message "NO LANGFILE", it means that you did not install GNU Chess correctly, and it is unable to find the file gnuchess.lang. Make sure that you defined LIBDIR in the gnuchess Makefile, and that gnuchess.lang is in that directory. If gnuchess.lang is not there, you probably didn't type "make install" in the gnuchess src directory; you must do this to install gnuchess.lang (and the gnuchess book). If you defined LIBDIR to something that is not an absolute pathname (that is, to something that does not start with a "/"), GNU Chess will work only if you run it from the GNU Chess "src" directory where you built it.
XChess has only one significant feature that is not present in XBoard: Two humans can play chess using XChess on different machines, without using the Internet Chess Server as an intermediary. This feature is of interest only if you don't have network connectivity to the Internet Chess Server.
Note: There actually have been several different programs called "XChess" in circulation at various times. The above describes one that was associated with GNU Chess.
You can download Crafty from ftp://ftp.cis.uab.edu/pub/hyatt/. Start by getting the read.me file and reading it. Among other things, this file contains instructions on how to install Crafty as a command-line application on your machine.
There is a Crafty mailing list. To subscribe, send email to majordomo@cis.uab.edu, with "subscribe crafty-list" in the body.
First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line application on your machine. See topic [D.3].
To use Crafty with XBoard, give the -fcp parameter like this:
xboard -fcp "crafty" -fd crafty_directory
Here crafty_directory is the directory where you installed Crafty.
You can add more xboard options at the end of the command line.
Crafty 15.14 or later is required to work properly with XBoard 4.0.0 or later. We generally recommend using the latest versions of both XBoard and Crafty.
First, you need to get Crafty and install it as a command-line application on your machine. See topic [D.3]. You must use the version of Crafty compiled for Win32 (wcrafty*.exe), not the version compiled for MS-DOS (crafty*.exe), and it is best to use the latest version of Crafty with the latest version of WinBoard to make sure all features are compatible and function correctly. You can install Crafty in any directory you like.
You also need to get WinBoard and install it in the normal way using its built-in installer. You can do that either before or after you install Crafty.
After both Crafty and WinBoard are installed separately, follow the directions in the WinBoard Help file (included with WinBoard) for connecting new chess engines to WinBoard.
If you want to have Crafty act as an automated computer player on a chess server, see topic [B.16]. Before you try to get that working, be sure you can play against Crafty locally, first without WinBoard, then with it. Also be sure you can use WinBoard to play on the chess server yourself, without having Crafty connected to it. You have to crawl before you can walk!