FICS supports anonymous login, but you'll find more people to play if you visit
www.freechess.org first and create an account.
If you're having problems logging in, try deselecting "timeseal".
Login Name This is your user name on the FICS
server. To login anonymously, use the "Login as guest" button.
.... It is also possible to login anonymously with a particular name. Enter
you favourite name into the login field and clear the password field. If this
name is not registered it will become yours for this session; otherwise please
close FICS and try logging in again.
Password The password is not displayed when you type,
but is stored in plain text within Scid's configuration files. If you are
using a publicly accessible computer, please make sure to
restrict readability to these files, or clear password after FICS end.
Timeseal and Zseal Optionally, the FICS server can be routed through either timeseal
or (the open source) zseal programs. Their purpose is to cope with network lags and keep the clocks in
correct order, which can otherwise create problems on slow network connections.
The author is not authoritive, but i think zseal uses timeseal protocol 2, and can also better handle special characters.
Timeseal and Zseal are available from the
Scid vs. PC project page.
URL This is normally "freechess.org", but during outages, it is
also worth trying "fics2.freechess.org".
IP Address If you need to change the URL, press "Refresh" for Scid to search for a new IP Address,
but normally you shouldnt have to worry about this field. After FICS has connected once, the IP Address shouldn't change again.
Server port specifies the port on the server.
The default is 5000 and should be ok for almost all needs.
Timeseal port specifies the port where the
timeseal program is listening. The default is 5001
and should be ok for almost all needs.