nin15b0b@merrimack.edu (David E. Sheafer, Class of 1989) (12/27/90)
The Terminator Atari Archive Help File
Welcome to BART, Brode's Archive Retrieval Thang, Terminator's Atari mail
server. To use the server, send a message to atari@atari.archive.umich.edu.
The subject line is ignored. The body of the message should contain, one per
line, any of the following commands. Each of the commands sends its output
back to you via mail.
"help"
This command tells BART to send you this file.
"index"
This command tells BART to send you the Index.
Currently, the index is a listing of all the files
int the Atari area. Descriptions of various files
can sometimes be found in the Index file of each
directory. These must be requested individually
with the send command. They are currently incomplete,
but it's all we have for now.
"path mail-address"
This command tells BART where to send the requested
files. This is useful for specifying a mail path.
"send directory/filename"
This is the command that sends out files from the
archive. The server only lets you get files from
the ~atari hierarchy so you only have to specify the
subdirectories in the atari tree. You can determine
the path and filename from the Index file. For example,
if you wanted to get arc, you'd send a message with
a line in the body that looked like
send archivers/arc.ttp
to get the index file, use
send Index
Binary programs are uuencoded before they are sent
out. If you miss parts of a file, rather than re-request
the whole thing, you can give BART a comma separated
list of the parts you are missing and it will send you
those parts. For example...
send languages/gcc.arc aa,ac,af
This is the only way to get files larger than 400K.
You must request the file by parts until you have the
whole thing.
Note: BART does not accept wildcards such as ? or *.
"sendb directory/filename"
This is similar to the send command except that it
always uuencodes the files that it sends out. Send
tries to determine whether it is sending a binary
or ascii file and only sends uuencoded messages when
necessary.
While the commands are not case sensitive, the filenames are, so be
careful you are using the correct case before complaining that the server
is broken.
You are limited to 400k and/or 5 files per day. It takes 24 hours from
the time that bart received your last message to clear your quota
records. BART does not queue requests that went over quota and send them
out later. You have to re-request them 24 hours later.
BART tends to ignore your mistakes. You will not receive a message back
if you gave an illegimate command or specified a bad file name. This was
a deliberate design decision. It may not be user friendly, but it keeps
the mail queues short and prevents a couple other nasty things.
Submissions are always welcome. Please mail them to
weiner@atari.archive.umich.edu
Jon Brode -- jon@atari.archive.umich.edu dyer@math.lsa.umich.edu
Terminator Atari Archive Moderator
------------ End Forwarded Messages ------------
--
David E. Sheafer
nin15b0b@merrimack.edu
or
samsung!hubdub!nin15b0b