Anyone wanna try out Usenet on their System 7 Mac?



Welcome, Guest \| Home \| Search \| Login \| Register


Author	Anyone wanna try out Usenet on their System 7 Mac? (Read 123039 times)
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	on: September 24, 2023, 13:52 I ran into the website Eternal-September.org. (retro browser compatible) It offers free access to Usenet news groups after registration. So by using a software like NewsWatcher (retro browser compatible), you can connect to it from your System 7 Mac. I just did with my IIci sporting System 7.1. (take that, modern forum software!!) Granted, there isn't much activity on Usenet news groups these days. Most unmoderated groups are drowning with spam. But I figured it'd be interesting to see how things used to work back before the WWW (in case you missed the Usenet heydays like myself) or simply looking for some nostalgia. Anyone of you been on Usenet news groups? If so, which ones were you frequenting?
Last Edit: September 24, 2023, 13:54 by Bolkonskij
wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #1 on: September 24, 2023, 15:22 Usenet was the Wild West back in the 80s. Sort of the Dark Web before there was a web. I was accessing CompuServe and GEnie back then using a terminal program on a Commodore 128 and both CompuServe and GEnie allowed for access to Usenet. I think Usenet is credited with the first “spam”. There were groups for just about any recreation and professional interests a person might have. Comp.sys.cbm covered all things Commodore both hardware and software and there were other similar groups devoted to other platforms. Porn was well represented, name your kink and it could be found. There was a lot of software piracy. There was a special format used, where each posting would contain a bit of the file, and applications could be had which would extract the binary data from the messages and stitch them back together to create the whole. Of course various license keys and such were freely exchanged as well. It was a real mess to keep track of. If you would skip a couple days of checking in, you would find you had missed a thousand messages. I do not recall their being much of any or indeed any moderation at all. It was sort of self policed. Groups that dealt with serious professional interests had very little tolerance for nonsense. Posting a pointless query would result in horrid shaming and such. (Far worse than the humiliation that can be heaped on people for pointless posts in the Arch Linux forums.) It was really just jumping into a rabbit hole. It was a fun, amusing and sometimes helpful waste of an evening, certainly no worse than spending the evening watching sit-coms on the TV. But like many things of the past, while very engaging at the time, it did not age well, and beyond nostalgia I do not think it serves any real purpose anymore.

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #2 on: September 25, 2023, 03:32 I'm what you might call a "veteran" usenet user. In that I regularly read the "news" and have done so since my first Mac was connected to the outside world via a dial-up modem. I'm also a long time user of Eternal-September, which is an excellent, text only, free usenet service (no binary groups). I had used NewsWatcher pretty much from the outset. Then, after its creator John Norstad open-sourced his NW code, a variety of spin-offs arose. I tried what came along, and settled on MT-NewsWatcher by Simon Fraser. MT-NW is what I recommend to anyone who wants to try usenet from an old Mac. MT-NW version 2.4.4 is the final release for both 68k and PPC, it requires 7.1 and a 68020 or higher CPU. Later versions will run on PPC only and various Mac OSs. MT-NW v3.4 is the final PPC classic Mac OS native version (classic and X versions), and finally 3.5.3b2, a Universal Beta that I think ran on Snow Leopard and earlier, but was not compatible with Lion and newer. What MT-NW brings to the usenet table is PCRE (Pearl Compatible Regular Expressions) which is built-in to MT-NW (Web Archive https link to a PCRE primer page for MT-NW from the time of MT-NW v2.4.4). Why is this important? PCRE offers an incredibly robust filtering of posts. Usenet is a playground for anyone, and by that I mean it's also open to abuse, from spammers and absolute A-holes who will want to troll your day. So by using filtering, from a sanity point of view, you cannot beat MT-NW's PCRE for blocking out the crud. One text group I can recommend is uk.comp.sys.mac as it's a fairly active group still, and most involved are pretty cordial. It's a mainly modern Mac focused group but you will get the occasional "vintage" Mac post turning up. Most of the (English) Mac groups are found under the comp.sys.mac hierarchy. But there are 1000's of groups to look into, E-S peers over 30,000 text groups, so happy usenet-ing.
Last Edit: September 28, 2023, 04:30 by MTT
ovalking 128 MB Posts: 199	Reply #3 on: September 25, 2023, 11:47 My first use of Usenet was in the early 90s when we had an internal system at work (external groups could be accessed too). With no spam to worry about, those internal groups were fantastic. Without that experience I would probably still have no idea what it was - it was never well 'advertised'. Related thread. http://system7today.com/forums/index.php?topic=3584
Last Edit: September 28, 2023, 09:30 by Bolkonskij
68040 512 MB Posts: 950 68k - thy kingdom come, thy will be done !	Reply #4 on: September 27, 2023, 01:09 Signed up & donated.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #5 on: September 27, 2023, 16:03 @wove awesome, thanks for sharing your memories! I don't know if it didn't age well, it seems very info-centric with no fluff and as such thought you'd like it :-) it has, of course, lost it's uniqueness but then what I love about it is the distributed approach, i.e. take out the 10 biggest Usenet servers tomorrow and the thing will still run with all the posts. @MTT - great comment here! Followed your advice and installed MT-Newswatcher 2.4 on my IIci and it does bring a lot of helpful features. Also thanks for mentioning the uk.comp.sys.mac group - a bit too modern in Mac terms for me, but nonetheless appears to be fairly active and a good one. (my IIci choked hard when retrieving the thousands of message ). @ovalking - thanks for pointing out the other thread, I completely missed it! What strikes me most when using Usenet is the complete focus on the info and the people and nothing else. I very much like that. I wonder if we should work on the S7T forums to become a little bit more Usenet-like in that regard? --------------------- Anyone up for a time travel back to 1983? At least in Usenet you can. I ran into olduse.net, which is kind of an archive of the 1980's Usenet. You can use your Usenet Reader and connect. What makes this special, is that it displays the (archived) Usenet content of exactly 40 years back (or 41, or 42, depending on your choice). So if you connect now, you'll see all the content dating back to exactly 40 years ago. September 27th that is. You can read about students protesting tuition increases, discussions on the "new" Toyota Supra car and even ads like "NEW VIC-20 for sale". Visiting it from my Mac IIci has been the ultimate trip back in time for me this afternoon. Looking forward to see the next few months and the 1984 Macintosh release getting featured :-)
Last Edit: September 27, 2023, 16:13 by Bolkonskij
MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #6 on: September 28, 2023, 04:07 You could take a look at comp.sys.mac.vintage, which may suit classic tastes. Warning: Last posting to it was in April 2023 and is pretty much dead at the moment. comp.sys.mac.vintage is a relatively new NG, approx. 4 - 5 years old. It could do with some posts to get it going. Perhaps that NG could be a usenet vehicle for general S7T news announcements, plugs, and such. Like forthcoming challenges and events, etc. @ovalking: I'm unable to view the link you provided. If I'm not logged in, I get taken to a registration and login page, with an error message about being not permitted to view the linked page. While I am now logged in, I just get an error page with this message: "An Error Has Occurred! The topic or board you are looking for appears to be either missing or off limits to you." Which I find kind of strange as I don't have any problem clicking Recent Posts links on the Home page or other links in pages in general, logged in or not (at least that is, this one is a first for me).
Last Edit: September 28, 2023, 04:09 by MTT
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #7 on: September 28, 2023, 09:34 I discovered the comp.sys.mac.vintage group like 2-3 days ago. Unfortunately, as you noted, there isn't much activity going on, which is a pity. Usenet is such a nice way of communicating on retro hardware. And yes, we might post about some S7T challenges there as well. Speaking of it, will you join the Hypercard challenge, MTT? The link above to the older discussion is fixed, it had a number too much at the end. Works now for me.

Knezzen Administrator 512 MB Posts: 608 Village idiot	Reply #8 on: September 28, 2023, 12:39 I don't have anything new to add, I'm just to overwhelmed with all of this and I can't understand how I missed it at all. Well, I'm registered and I'm browsing Usenet using MT-NewsWatcher now. Thanks for the tip, MTT!

wove 1024 MB Posts: 1363	Reply #9 on: September 28, 2023, 14:21 HyperCard had a front end for Compuserve and Genie back in the day. Hypercard does have good capabilities work accessing information over a network. Just wondering if it would be possible (or feasible) to create a Usenet reader built on HyperCard. A group becomes a stack? A thread becomes a card? It is way beyond my pay grade, but it would be pretty nice.

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #10 on: October 01, 2023, 05:24 @Knezzen: Great I do hope that you get something rewarding out of it, this late in the usenet twilight @wove: Back in the very early days of usenet, John Norstad, the author of NewsWatcher (the newsreader that triggered this discussion) and the also author of the once popular Disinfectant, first used a HyperCard Newsreader called "NetNews", before he decided to create NewsWatcher. He mentioned NetNews in his autobiography <--now WA only (https link). Quote from: John Norstad: "In the early days, I used Harry Chelsey's "NetNews" HyperCard stack to read Usenet news (before that, I used UNIX readers). It was slow and clumsy due to the inherent limitations of HyperCard, but very nicely designed." He then goes on to describe how by 1992, the full group list at NU was growing too big, killing off NetNews and what he used next, and then how his NewsWatcher newsreader evolved from that. I can see where he's coming from with his "inherent limitations of HyperCard" comment. HC uses TextEdit, the simple word processing engine built into the classic Mac OS (not to be confused with any standalone application that may be called "TextEdit"). TextEdit has a 32K character limit, so retrieving a full groups list from a modern usenet server would choke and crash HC quickly. As would downloading a header list from a popular group. @Bolkonskij: I've thought about the HC Challenge, and am still sitting on the fence here. I used to dabble with HC a bit back in the early to mid 1990's. And since the challenge announcement, I've be trawling through some old archives to see just what it was that I did back then. Looking at some of the HyperTalk that I wrote I can see that I'd would have to relearn the whole on mouseup jargon all over again Still, I am re-looking at it, and if I don't get up to speed in time, I'll look forward to seeing what comes about
Last Edit: October 01, 2023, 05:27 by MTT
scouter 64 MB Posts: 81 Retired IT Administraor	Reply #11 on: October 01, 2023, 10:26 Tried this on my iBook G4 Mac OS X tiger using MT-NewsWatcher 3.4 I signed up to news.eternal-september.org and everything is working perfectly. I could use my own ISP news server as they are still running one. I am with PlusNet. Christopher.

Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #12 on: October 01, 2023, 11:10 @MTT Interesting bit of history you wrote about! I wonder where to get the mentioned Hypercard-based NetNews - it doesn’t look like it’s on the Garden, at least a quick search didn’t yield any results. I’d be interested in giving it a try on my Mac IIci, possibly in System 6 even. I’d access the 1983 archive of the Usenet with it - back then, there was still a limited number of groups, most adhering to universities like Berkeley, University of Toronto etc. It should hopefully be able to chew that. Re: HC Challenge Don’t worry. Just get started with something. This is not about creating a masterpiece but to GET BACK INTO the creative process of creating something. I noticed I have like zero Hypercard skills left (didn’t have much during the 90’s either ) but it’s the journey that counts. Give it a go @scouter Alrighty then, read you on Usenet! :-) … amazing your ISP still runs a news server, that appears to become a rare thing now.

MTT 256 MB Posts: 394 SSW7 Oldtimer	Reply #13 on: October 02, 2023, 03:56 Re NetNews HyperCard Newsreader: I found a few references to NetNews via mrdav's old Software Catalog. Most seem to be located on early MacHack CD compilations. mrdav has added a "See also" link to additional MacHack CD compilations, on the Garden page for MacHack. His (https) link is for a Web Archive search (and hopefully found) page. The likely candidate will be "MacHack 1993" which according to mrdav's comment in the MG page, is located with the Web Archive collection. Edit: Yep, NetNews v1.2.1 by Harry Chelsey is located on MacHack 1993. It's a HC v1.x Stack from 1989, it seems to load OK in HC v2.1 on 7.6 I haven't looked at it further, but it is the NetNews Stack that John Norstad had first used before he went on to creating NewsWatcher.
Last Edit: October 02, 2023, 05:06 by MTT
Bolkonskij Administrator 1024 MB Posts: 2023	Reply #14 on: October 02, 2023, 13:39 That's some interesting archaeology, excavating the old NetNews client. Definitely something worth preserving along with the historical anecdote. Out of interest, in what folder did you find it? I've downloaded the MacHack '93 disc myself but after looking through the folders of '93 and those of the past years, I have yet to come up with a copy.

	Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 5

© 2021 System7Today.com.
The Apple Logo, Macintosh™, Mac OS™, and others property of Apple Computer, Inc.
This site is in no way affiliated with Apple Computer, Inc.