Newsgroups/Usenet/Newsreaders

Chippy_Minton

irnbru wrote:

... but remember it's Usenet not Google Groups.

Agreed. I just gave GG as an alternative, a sort of poor man's Usenet, although it is very useful as an archive of the more popular Usenet groups.

yelac21271

Here is a complete idiots guide, hope this will help you out

THE COMPLETE IDIOTS GUIDE TO NEWSGROUPS

NNTP stands for Network News Transport Protocol.
Retention means how long a file or post remains on the server.

Software you will require

Newsbin Standard or Pro (to view and download)
WinRAR (to extract the data from compressed files)
QuickPar (to repair any damaged or missing files)

The Guide

There are many NNTP servers located across the global which act as a storage area for users to upload and download information from. When a user uploads information to a particular server, this gets replicated across the global to all the NNTP servers so everyone can download and view the same information.

The information is held within groups to make finding it easier. These groups are a bit like chatrooms, so for example if you wanted to see information on say Doctor Who, you would look in all the Doctor Who groups.

To download data Wink you need to be looking in the binary groups. A good example of a Doctor Who group would be:

alt.binaries.multimedia.doctorwho

Some servers offer better retention,speed and group access than others, this is mainly based on bandwidth and storage space available to the server. Your ISP may offer you free NNTP server access but this will have very limited retention, only a few hundred groups and perhaps throttled bandwidth. It is best in this case to signup for a premium NNTP service, however you have to pay for this Wink

1. Sign up and Register with a News NNTP Provider

Firstly you will need to signup and register with a good NNTP provider. I would recommend newshosting.com

Go to the following website where you can get an unlimited account for $14.95 a month

http://www.newshosting.com/?a=78978

Once you have completed your subscription you will have been asigned with a username and password. The plan you are on gives you an unlimited account with 8 simultanous connections and 24 days of retention.

2. Setting up the software

Install the Newsbin software onto your computer. You will have a desktop shortcut appear on your desktop....Yep that little red robot one Wink
Fire the little guy up where he'll guide you through the setup screen. As good as he is, click the cancel button cause we can do it better!

When your in the main newsbin program, click on 'Preferences' and scroll down to 'Server Options'

Server Name - Newshosting
Server Address - unlimited.newshosting.com

Tick Required Login box and enter your username and password for your Newshosting account

Change the Max Server Connections to 8 and Apply > OK

back in the Newsbin main screen, look towards the bottom left where you'll see a number 2. Click the up arrow twice to increase this to 8

File > Save As to save your config settings so you don't have to do this all over again...and again....and again....

3. Finding out what's on the newsgroups (part 1)

Ok, so you're all paid up and ready to go, but what to download! You could just go searching through the groups until you found something you fancied.....but what! all 33,000 of them.........and u know that each group has thousands of posts right..........this could take you YEARS. Wouldnt it be nice if you could search all the groups at once for something you wanted and have it's location pointed out directly to you in a nice easy file you could just run to automatically download.

We'll, there is. It's called newzbin.com

again you'll need to dig deep into them pockets of yours because you'll need to signup for a premium account. Don't worry though, because it's only a couple of quid a month (YES IT'S A BRITISH OWNED SITE). Go to the website at http://www.newzbin.com to get your account details and search away till your hearts content Smile

Here's an example to show you how it's done

My girlfriend wants the latest dance album to listen to in the car. Let's for arguments say it's called Dance Party 2007

Sign into Newzbin.com with your premium account and type in Dance Party 2007 in the search window at the top. Newzbin will then search and return a list of results to you. If what you're looking for is found, click on the link to be presented with a list of files you will need to download.

I have been presented with the following

Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - front.jpg
Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - back.jpg
Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track01.mp3
Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track02.mp3
Dance Party 2007 - CD1 - track03.mp3
...and so on

You'll notice all the files have a tick next to them. This is to show they are selected as files you want. If for any reason you don't want track01.mp3 then simply remove the tick. When you are happy with the files you want click the 'Get Message IDs' button at the top. Your web browser will download a file to you. This is your newsgroup location file Smile

4. Finding out what's on the newsgroups (part 2)

My girlfriend has now decided, that she would rather have the music video rather than the album, typical bloody women!

again, signing into Newzbin.com I will do the same search as above hoping to find a result which could be the video rather than the music album. I'm looking across at the groups to see one which could fit the bill.

BINGO!

I have found a group called alt.binaries.music.video which has Dance Party 2007 in it. Going into the link I am presented with some very different files indeed Sad

Dance Party 2007 - DVD - front.jpg
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - back.jpg
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.par2
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.nfo
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r00
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r01
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.r03
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.rar
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p00
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p01
Dance Party 2007 - DVD - dp2007dvd.p02

Looking through the files I notice that file r02 is missing. Great, so now what do I do.....we'll you see that par2 file and the p01,p02 they are magic files. These babys can repair damaged or missing files. If you ever see a missing file without the magic ones, wait a few days and try again. If they still don't appear then forget it and move on with your life.

5. Downloading

Fire up Mr Robot again to get back into Newsbin, this time armed with your location file.

Click on File > Load Download List and select your location file you got from Step 3.

The files you selected from Newzbin.com will have been imported ready for download. Click on the first file, hold down the shift key and press your cursor keys to select all the files you want. Have they turned blue? No! Do it again then.........have they turned blue now....ah you were pressing the up arrow by mistake hehehe, nevermind have they gone blue now? Great! Right click in the blue area and select 'Download to Folder' find a place on your hard disk you want to save the files to and click on ok.

That's it matey! You've just downloaded your first file from the newsgroups. Give yourself a pat on the back!

Now what to do. We'll, depends on what you have downloaded. If you have downloaded r00, r01 and rars and have a full set without any missing ones simply double click on the RAR file to extract it with WinRAR.

If you are unlucky in that you have any missing files or WinRAR starts moaning about CRC errors (which means some are damaged) you need to go down to step 6.

6. Fixing any problems

Have u been sent here from step 5 Wink oh dear....you have some missing files. Nevermind we can fix them!

Install QuickPar and follow all the onscreen instructions. Now close it. Yep, that's right! Go into it and then come out of it again.
Find your par2 file you downloaded from Newsbin and double click it. Quickpar will open up and start scanning and after a short period of time, ask you to repair. Click the repair button which will make them all jump up singing and dancing. Go back to step 5 to finish off.

NOTES:

If after extracting the files with WinRAR, you are left with files you don't understand (eg. BIN/CUE/ISO files) use either Alcohol 120% or DVD Decrypter to burn.

wonderfullife_2

Hi
Well there you go, learn something new everyday, it was the Newsbin that I tried, but I just couldn't get the hang of it, just me probably being a big thick although the above post explains a lot that I didn't know before, so I might try it again.
I also use Quickpar, excellent little program, I also use a download manager, which are highly recommended by the newsgroups, especially for large files and Yenc-Power-Post to upload to the newgroup.

Fat_Boy

Well I joined Newsgroupsdirect.com (which came with a free copy of some newsreader or other).

TBH was very disappointed, there were only something like 33000 groups (not the 100k I had been led to believe existed) and most of them had hardly any posts, apart from the *ahem* Adult interest groups.

Not really sure what I expected, but the endless 'Earn $$$ from Paypal' posts finally did my head in and I have cancelled my account.

Obviously there must be something of interest on there or people wouldn't use it, so where was I going wrong? And are some usenet servers better than others (ie have more groups than the one I was on)?

Dack

For binary data I use Astraweb (primarily for it's 'pay as you go' deal - $15 for 90Gig of data). Unfortunately, as you've probably discovered, there are a lot of empty groups out there so you will need to find where the data you require is.

A good site to check is https://www.newzbin.com as this allows you to search newsgroups to find articles of interest. You can then, if you subscribe to their service, create a file containing the header information to download all the parts of the file (NZBs). An alternative to this is to use the newsgroups that have got NZB in their name as these conain ready made files for you to download.

Another option is using a site like nzbsrus.com.

Thirdly, if you use GRABBIT then you can search there - 4 times a day unless you pay for the extra service.

-TangleFoot-

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really cannot understand why anyone would pay for Usenet access. If you want to save money, look for a free news server.

Februarycat

Now that Wanadoo have stopped newsgroups I have had to find another way to read them, this one seems ok https://www.nntp.aioe.org and easy to set up, and free.

Alltheloginsaretakenappar

MikeyMike wrote:

By far the best site I have read about newsgroups is this one. Talks about servers, news readers every thing you need to get started.

Slycks Guide To Newsgroups

Hope this helps.

Definitely the best guide to newsgroups.

I use grabbit newsreader (free), powerusenet newsservers ($14.95/month unlimited), and http://www.newzbin.com indexing site (25p/week) and would recommend all 3, especially newzbin

vgopal

-TangleFoot- wrote:

I've said it before and I'll say it again: I really cannot understand why anyone would pay for Usenet access. If you want to save money, look for a free news server.

people not only use usenet for text, they also use it for binaries.
you wont find many if any servers that support binaries, and if they did the service, completion and speed is rubbish.