Scid vs PC ... "pgnscid" utility

Does anyone know how to use command line utility "pgnscid" in Scid vs PC to convert PGN files into Scid database format? Do I have to open DOS window and type "pgnscid [filename]"? What directory should I be in?

Yeah, I know how to do it. However, I should first mention that you don't really need to use the pgnscid utility program. All you need to do is to first create a new, empty Scid database, then just import the PGN file into the Scid database.

If you do want to use the pgnscid utility, then you should put the PGN file in the same folder as the pgnscid.exe file (It's in the Scid "bin" folder) and execute the pgnscid.exe program via the command line.

If you've pointed the command line to that folder so you don't have to worry about file paths, then you only need to type:

pgnscid.exe Sample.pgn

(I guess you could just type:  pgnscid Sample.pgn)

Thanks, I'll try...

Of course, you're right about importing PGN files into Scid database. The help file says pgnscid is more reliable on large files, so you need to know both ways.

I guess, Dragging and Dropping a PGN file onto Scid file on the bottom of the screen would be the same as importing PGN into that Scid file?

Also, how do you resign a game in Scid vs PC (if it's not a FICS game)?

I believe "yes" to the first question.

2nd question, I don't think Scid vs. PC lets you resign a game. At least it's not apparent to me.

Yeah, it's a little inconvenience in Scid, this resign/offer draw issue. If you are playing a FICS internet game on Scid, I remember there's "resign"/"offer draw" buttons. But then again you can resign/offer draw in the command line prompt using appropriate FICS commands. If you are playing against an engine, the clock that pops up lets you abort a game which is similar to resigning a game. I don't know how to offer a draw to a chess engine, I've never tried... But I don't have enough experience playing against chess engines

I just used Scid itself and not the command line utility on a pgn file nearly 300MB in size and it worked just fine.  This is on a laptop I got last year but it was inexpensive and but not especially powerful (2.0Ghz quad-core-processor).

Interesting experimental observation... Thanks. I use Dell Latitude E6400 laptop with 2.4 GHz dual core, 2GB RAM... By the way, all this size limitations, are they because of particular software, like in our case Scid vs PC or is it more operating system/disk partitioning problems?

No it could actually be a RAM problem, if they read the entire PGN file into memory all at once.  If so I'd say the software was poorly written in that regard, or just that such large PGN files were inconceivable at the time it was written.

If they read in the PGN files in chunks, such as one game at a time, there wouldn't be a RAM problem.  Presuming you are on windows, you could have task manager open when you import a PGN file and see how your RAM consumption goes, but I would only try this with smallish files to begin with and work your way up.  If your RAM consumption does not go up too much, it means it's reading the PGN file in chunks, and that would be a good thing.

I have that little Win7 "gauge" utility on my screen. It shows RAM and CPU consumption. Also when I use Arena 3.5 (it's another chess software, I don't know if you know) it shows how much RAM is being used. That number is always there on the tool bar. Usually, in my case it hovers around 1Gb which is 50% of the total RAM memory I have. So it's probably software that screws things up. Scid and Arena are both freeware, so they don't test their product well, I suppose... I recently discovered a serious bug in Arena and have no idea who to report it to.

I have been using Arena 3.5 and 3.5.1 extensively, like on 3 or 4 computers, on average 12-16 hours a day, for the past half year with no problems.  This doesn't mean you haven't had yours, it's just that I've found it reliable.  And how much RAM it consumes does not mean it "screws things up".  I run it on machines with a lot more RAM than you have, and I intentionally set it to consume almost all of the RAM on my machines as long as I'm not using those machines for other purposes.  The setting for this is the UCI "hash size" setting: on my machine with 32 GB of RAM I set it to consume 24+ GB of RAM without problems.  I think maybe you just need to familiarize yourself with more of the settings.  However if you set your hash size too small, the capabalities of whatever engine you are running will be limited somewhat.

Are you a professional/titled chess player? Or do you just run a lot engine vs engine games? As far as I know hash memory in the settings is not the same as the total memory Arena consumes. I know about hash memory, I think I set it to 256 MB on my computer... But this discussion is becoming too technical and I'm not a professional programmer. I'm just a user

No I'm not a professional/titled player but I have been a web software engineer for over 15 years now

Do you know much about chess engines from programming point of view?

Well, chess engines and EGTBs (especially Syzygy)...?

No, sorry, just a user