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