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Rasmus Althoff CT800, Manual, Page: 5 / 32

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Rasmus Althoff CT800 Manual Download Page 5

1.2  Wall Power

Use a mains-to-USB adaptor that delivers 200 mA at 5 V DC. The CT800 offers a USB
type B socket at the backside. Though it is not strictly guaranteed, most computers and
laptops will also be suitable to deliver the necessary power from a USB port.

Put   the   main   switch   on  the   backside  to  position   “1”  to  have  the   CT800  run  from  the
external power supply.

Note: running on external power does not recharge the internal batteries. Therefore, you
can safely use external power without removing the internal batteries.

1.3  Overvoltage

Putting more than 7.5 V to the CT800 will make the relevant fuse for the power source
(external or internal) melt down. Changing the fuse will require qualified personnel. There
is a suitable reserve fuse inside the CT800, type 5

×

20mm / 1 A fast.

5 / 32

Summary of Contents for CT800

Page 1: ...Manual CT800 a dedicated chess computer c 2016 2017 by Rasmus Althoff althoff ct800 net document version v1 32 ...

Page 2: ... 7 Position Display 12 3 8 Game Info 12 3 9 Display Light 12 3 10 Auto Save 12 4 Dialogue System 13 4 1 Battery Info 13 4 2 Power on Self Test 14 4 3 Game Finished 14 5 Menu System 15 5 1 Menu Tree 16 5 2 New Game 16 5 3 File 17 5 3 1 Load Game 17 5 3 2 Save Game 17 5 3 3 Erase Game 17 5 3 4 Book 18 5 3 5 Reset 18 5 4 Position 19 5 4 1 View Position 19 5 4 2 Enter Position 19 5 4 3 View Notation 2...

Page 3: ...sp 27 5 6 5 Light 27 5 6 6 Beep 28 5 7 Info 28 6 Software Update 29 7 Troubleshooting 30 7 1 Power on Self Test 30 7 2 Auto Save Info 31 7 3 Reset Diagnostics 31 7 4 System Crash 32 7 5 General Handling 32 3 32 ...

Page 4: ...Hz hypercharge The battery voltage is monitored to prevent damaging NiMH rechargeable batteries by deep discharge see chapter 4 1 Battery Info Disposable batteries alkaline type will also work though they are not economic in the long run Note always use identical batteries i e of the same capacity age and temperature and by the same manufacturer always keep rechargeable batteries at the same charg...

Page 5: ...ckside to position 1 to have the CT800 run from the external power supply Note running on external power does not recharge the internal batteries Therefore you can safely use external power without removing the internal batteries 1 3 Overvoltage Putting more than 7 5 V to the CT800 will make the relevant fuse for the power source external or internal melt down Changing the fuse will require qualif...

Page 6: ... backlight activation Power input 4 AA rechargeable NiMH batteries or via 5 V DC wall power adapter Non rechargeable batteries are also suitable though not economic Battery running time with 2200 mAh NiMH batteries assuming 90 usable battery capacity 37 5 hours 168 MHz regular 33 5 hours 200 MHz turbo 30 hours 240 MHz hypercharge 42 hours 144 MHz eco Current consumption at 5 V 18 mA while waiting ...

Page 7: ...ing system none bare metal Programming language mostly C and some assembly Compiler GCC 6 3 Q1 2017 ARM none eabi Author of the ARM port Rasmus Althoff Base program NG Play v9 86 Author of NG Play v9 86 George Georgopoulos Author of the endgame table for king pawn vs king Marcel van Kervinck Licence GNU General Public License GPL Version 3 or later As per the GPL those who receive the executable p...

Page 8: ...tically recognised as capture This holds also for taking a pawn en passant Castling is treated as a pure king move e g from e1 to g1 The rook position will be updated automatically Promoting a pawn means entering the from square the to square and optionally the promotion piece Queen A1 Rook B2 Bishop C3 Knight D4 If you do not enter a specific promotion piece a queen will be selected automatically...

Page 9: ...thinking display will change to oO When the CT800 has computed its move it will replace the by its computed move in pretty print format 3 2 2 Quick Replies In time modes other than analysis mode see chapter 5 5 1 Time Mode the CT800 may reply much faster than what you would expect from the time configuration These quick replies shall save thinking time for the CT800 and keep opponents from using t...

Page 10: ...ece by neglect If the seemingly obvious move still makes the CT800 stand much worse than expected from the previous turn then maybe the CT800 had already seen something better e g a mating attack Independently from forced or obvious moves the CT800 also takes a look at how much thinking time it has left for its move If it has already used up more than 55 of the allocated move time when starting th...

Page 11: ...game is being played in tournament or game in mode a dialogue box will offer to switch to time per move 3 4 Cancel Computing If the CT800 is thinking you can interrupt the calculations and force it to move immediately by pressing the key 3 5 Undo If it is your turn and you want to undo a move press the 3 key You can only undo a full move not a single ply Possible time bookings will be undone too I...

Page 12: ...ch is deeper than the brute force base the depth display will be x y x indicated the brute force base and y the selective depth If a principal variation is available pressing the a key will display it The output format however will not be the pretty print format but the from to notation 3 9 Display Light You can switch on the display backlight at any time using the key This will override any confi...

Page 13: ...to 1 00 V per cell keeping the system running for much longer would possibly damage the batteries by deep discharge The CT800 will issue a failing batteries warning to inform you that it has to be switched off as to prevent damaging the batteries This warning works at all times After confirming the failing batteries warning or after a timeout of 15 minutes the display will be switched off The red ...

Page 14: ...The CT800 checks itself after power on and if problems are found a dialogue box will inform you See chapter 7 Troubleshooting for details 4 3 Game Finished When the game is finished a dialogue box shows up telling the reason You can just confirm it by a or you can press the position key The latter will show you the final position Repeated will flip the position and display the list of material Aft...

Page 15: ...lect it Inside a selection option use the 3 and 4 keys to change the option value For getting up one level you can press the a or the r key If you are at the top level already that will leave the menu system If you want to leave the menu press the key again This does not only work at the top level but from anywhere within the menu system In case you leave the menu system and have changed the confi...

Page 16: ... c position a view position b enter position c view notation d time a mode b details c soft TPM d boni a Fischer delay b player bonus c player factor e misc a colour b blur c turbo d disp e light f beep f info 5 2 New Game Opens a confirmation dialogue box and if you confirm a new game will start as per the saved configuration settings 16 32 ...

Page 17: ...me automatically See also chapter 5 3 2 Save Game 5 3 2 Save Game Save the current game This will disable the auto save feature because a manually saved game has priority See also chapter 5 3 3 Erase Game If you do not have a manually saved game the auto save will save the game after each ply Since the file operations do not use flash memory but battery buffered RAM frequent write operations do no...

Page 18: ...s rooted in the time management which does not include this first white ply 5 3 5 Reset Resets the CT800 to factory settings and erases any saved game Afterwards the CT800 will restart The factory settings are as follows Book on Time control mode time per move Time control details 10 seconds per move Fischer delay off Player bonus 15 seconds Player factor 1 Mate search depth 4 moves Colour CT800 s...

Page 19: ...ce type and move on to the next one If you want to enter more than one piece of the same type just enter the next square without pressing a inbetween You can delete the last square of the current piece type by pressing r If you enter a piece on a square that is already occupied by another entered piece that other piece will be overwritten silently with the exception of kings Since a position witho...

Page 20: ...l be skipped Finally the position viewer allows to check the entered position If you find a mistake and decline the following dialogue box you will start at the position of the white king but all of the entered items are already listed So you are not forced to enter everything again Just scroll though the piece types using 3 and 4 and correct only the erroneous items Note due to memory constraints...

Page 21: ... also chapter 5 5 4 Boni TRN tournament There are several tournament modes available AN analysis Pressing the key will have the CT800 analyse moves for up to nine hours or until it is interrupted using the key again The analysis mode displays the following data move number of the ongoing game E evaluation of the position in pawns principal variation with up to eight plies in from to notation D the...

Page 22: ...ng a or r A dialogue box will appear offering to search for another solution move Usually mate problems should only have one initial move that solves the problem but you can verify this If you confirm the CT800 will try to find a mate that does not involve the solution moves that have already been found You may repeat this as long as there are different solution moves If no or no further solution ...

Page 23: ...solve this puzzle non overclocked at 168 MHz The re search for other solution moves fails because there is only one This re search takes 41 minutes which is an example of the re search taking much longer As to avoid spoiling you the solution is not listed right here but on the last page of this document Mate in 7 white to move 23 32 ...

Page 24: ...g time of each player having passed the time control The full game may thus take up to 300 minutes 5 hours 40 120 20 60 30 means that each player has to complete his first 40 moves within 120 minutes of his thinking time in which case 60 minutes additional time are added The next 20 moves must be completed by 180 minutes total time in which case 30 minutes are added for the rest of the game The fu...

Page 25: ... time control mode game in the user can configure a factor by which his thinking time is multiplied So it is possible to have e g 15 minutes for the CT800 and 45 minutes for the user The available options are x1 x2 x3 x4 This is especially useful if you want the CT800 to play against another chess computer Giving the other computer a x4 player factor means that the CT800 will only check its own ti...

Page 26: ... the time control modes time per move analysis and mate in 5 6 2 Blur The position evaluation can be blurred with random noise Only applies to the middlegame not to the endgame This can add variety to the game at the cost of some playing strength The available options are off light 0 1 pawns medium 0 3 pawns strong 0 5 pawns 5 6 3 Turbo When the computer thinks the clock can be configured so that ...

Page 27: ...being much slower Compared to the regular 168 MHz the frequency is reduced by 14 while the measured net slowdown is only 11 The reason is that 144 MHz require one waitstate fewer Note clocks greater than 168 MHz are beyond the CPU s specification and not guaranteed to work However tests have shown that it usually will work fine As to prevent bricking the device after power on the turbo mode will o...

Page 28: ...eans silent operation click will only have the keyboard click active computer will the CT800 make announce its moves and activate error signals but no keyboard click on means combining the options click and computer 5 7 Info Displays the version of the software and the author of the CT800 28 32 ...

Page 29: ...ort socket You can now use any JTAG programming adaptor with a suitable toolchain to reprogram the CT800 Under GNU Linux that will be OpenOCD Under Windows the CoFlash tool from the Coocox environment is suitable Afterwards the CT800 may boot up with an error message saying it has been reset via PIN see also chapter 7 3 Reset Diagnostics This is a normal part of the flashing procedure and will onl...

Page 30: ...is that overclocking see chapter 5 6 3 Turbo will not work anymore The CT800 uses a firmware check for verifying correct system operation when going overclocked and if the checksum is bad to begin with this system stability check will fail RAM the internal RAM test failed The hardware is damaged and has to be replaced CLK the external quartz oscillator does not work The system will still run nearl...

Page 31: ...mes are stored menu file erase See also chapter 5 3 3 Erase Game Note just starting a new game via menu new game without erasing the saved game will start a new game but with auto save still being disabled Using menu file erase is the way to re enable the auto save 7 3 Reset Diagnostics When the CT800 starts it analyses why it has been reset A normal power on or an intentional system reset via men...

Page 32: ...itch to position 1 and change the batteries Otherwise the batteries might suffer damage The CT800 just has the red LED blinking once per second and if the beeper is configured as active it is clicking once per second see the previous point the batteries are failing The announcement has been displayed for 15 minutes before timing out The CT800 refuses an input move check the board position using th...

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