DGT board support

This document describes eboard's DGT board support.

Felipe Bergo <bergo@seul.org>

1. What is a DGT Board ?
2. Setting Up DGTNIX
  2.1 Step-by-step Instructions for compiling and installing dgtnix 1.7
  2.2 Known Issues with dgtnix
3. Using eboard with the DGT Board

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1. What is a DGT Board ?

The DGT Board is an electronic chess board that can be connected
to the computer and can be used for move input, so that you can
play with real pieces on a real chessboard. It connects to a USB
or serial port on the PC.

See http://www.dgtprojects.com/eboard.htm for details.


2. Setting Up DGTNIX

DGTNIX is an open source driver library for the DGT board, developed
by Pierre Boulenguez. It can be downloaded from
http://dgtnix.sourceforge.net.

eboard's DGT support depend on dgtnix, and you need to compile and
install dgtnix before compiling eboard, otherwise eboard will be
compiled without DGT board support.

eboard 1.0.3 requires dgtnix 1.7 or later. 

2.1: Step-by-step Instructions for compiling and installing dgtnix 1.7:

- download dgtnix-1.7.tar.gz from http://dgtnix.sourceforge.net
- to unpack, type in a terminal:          

    tar zxvf dgtnix-1.7.tar.gz

- to enter the unpacked directory, type:  

    cd dgtnix

- to compile dgtnix, type:                

    make

- to install dgtnix, become root (via su) and type these commands:

    cp dgtnix.h /usr/include
    cp libdgtnix.so* /usr/lib
    /sbin/ldconfig

2.2 Known Issues with dgtnix

    a) As of dgtnix-1.7, it lacks a "make install" target, requiring
       the above cp commands for installation.

    b) To compile dgtnix on x86_64 (AMD64) platforms, you need to add
       -fPIC to CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and LFLAGS in its Makefile. The lines
       that define these variables in the Makefile become:

       CFLAGS   = -O2 -Wall -ansi -fPIC
       CXXFLAGS = -O2 -Wall -ansi -fPIC
       LFLAGS   = -fPIC -shared -Wall,-soname,libdgtnix.so.1

    dgtnix was released before eboard had DGT board support, so it
    includes an old version of eboard with patches. It is recommended
    that you ignore the eboard provided there and use eboard 1.0.3 or
    later.

3. Using eboard with the DGT board

   To compile eboard >= 1.0.3 with DGT support, just configure and
   compile it as usual:

   tar jxvf eboard-1.0.3.tar.bz2
   cd eboard-1.0.3
   ./configure
   make
   (become root)
   make install

   The configure step will indicate whether dgtnix was found.

   Once eboard is installed, connect the DGT board and run eboard with
 

   eboard -dgtport device

   where device is the port the DGT board is attached to. If you are
   using a serial connection on Linux, it will be something like
   /dev/ttyS0 ... /dev/ttyS3.

   The output of the "dmesg" command issued right after connecting the
   board may show the device name to be used.

   The DGT board will be assigned to eboard's main board.