When you open MacFIBS, you will be presented with a dialog to connect to the FIBS server. Enter your user name and password, and click Connect.
MacFIBS will remember your username for the next time you log in. If you also wish to save your password, click the box titled “Save Password”. Your user name (and optionally password) are stored in the MacFIBS preferences file.
• • • For New Users • • •
If you do not already have a username for FIBS and wish to register, specify a username of guest and leave the password field blank. The next time you connect to FIBS, specify your new username and password.
I strongly recommend that you familiarize yourself with FIBS by using the help command in the MacFIBS Terminal window to read the online help. This User Guide does not attempt to explain FIBS commands and features. Note that you don’t need to know most of the FIBS commands, since MacFIBS generates them for you.
Life on Planet FIBS
Like the rest of the Internet, FIBS has its own culture, customs and etiquette. Please be sensitive to this when you play. More experienced players are usually happy to help new players learn how FIBS works.
If you are not already familiar with it, you may also be interested in following the backgammon discussion on the Internet newsgroup:
rec.games.backgammon
If you surf the World Wide Web, you may also be interested in Stephen’s WWW Backgammon Page (maintained by Stephen Turner):
At this time, FIBS resides in Gothenburg, Sweden on a Sun SPARC workstation. Its Internet address is (machine name and port):
fraggel65.mdstud.chalmers.se 4321
This may change in the future, so you should verify these addresses are correct; one way to do that is to check the Backgammon FAQ on the rec.games.backgammon newsgroup.
If you get error message indicating that no name server was found (this seems to happen to me about once a month when our local network’s name server has a problem — apparently Macintoshes aren’t the only computers that crash on a regular basis), you can substitute the direct IP address of the FIBS server in the FIBS Host field. Using the numeric form of an IP address eliminates the need for a name server transaction.
Currently the IP address of the FIBS server is: 129.16.235.90 4321
Again, this too may change over time, so you should verify this is correct.
Logging out of FIBS
To log out of FIBS, you can use the Disconnect command (under the File menu), or you can simply quit MacFIBS. If you choose Disconnect, you can later reconnect to FIBS using the Connect command.
NOTE: If you quit MacFIBS without first disconnecting, you may occasionally get a small window that says “Please wait: Still closing TCP connections.” and the window never goes away. This is a known bug. As a result, it is generally a good practice to disconnect before quitting MacFIBS.
FIBS settings
To use MacFIBS, you should configure your FIBS account as described in this section. Once these settings are saved, you should not have to alter them. If you are unsure how to make these changes, use the FIBS ‘help toggle’ or ‘help set’ commands to get more info.
The recommended settings are:
set
Settings of variables:
boardstyle: 3
linelength: 0
pagelength: 0
redoubles: Your Preference
sortwho: Not Important
timezone: Not Applicable
toggle
The current settings are:
allowpip Your Preference*
autoboard YES
autodouble Your Preference
automove Your Preference
bell Your Preference
crawford Your Preference
double Your Preference
greedy Your Preference
moreboards YES
notify Your Preference (YES is recommended)
ratings Your Preference
ready Your Preference
report Your Preference (YES is recommended)
silent Your Preference
telnet NO
wrap NO
* If you set allowpip to NO, you will not see pip counts in the bottom of the Board window.
Those toggle settings listed as “Your Preference” can be changed in the MacFIBS Settings menu. To change the other settings, use the toggle or set command in the Terminal window.
The boardstyle, linelength and pagelength values will be automatically set to the appropriate values (listed above) during the login process.
