jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) (12/02/89)
One of my friends in Boston has had a taste of netnews and wants more; anyone know of either 1: an inexpensive site that would give him access to news, or 2: some site in Boston that allows anonymous telnets (so he could make a local Boston call but connect to my account in Pittsburgh). This isn't quite about mail, but I couldn't think of a better place to ask... -- Jamie (jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu)
dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) (12/03/89)
In article <7183@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) writes: >One of my friends in Boston has had a taste of netnews and wants more; anyone > know of either 1: an inexpensive site that would give him access to news, or The public-access usenet sites have their own newsgroup hierarchy. Check pubnet.nixpub for a listing of all known sites. If your site does not carry this group, I'll mail you the latest listing. Starting your own site is not really out of the question, if you have about $5k to spend (386 AT clone with 4 MB RAM + >120 MB disk), UNIX runtime + development, modem, multiport board, extra phone line or two, a load of books), and (if you aren't already a UNIX whiz) 6 months to a year of evenings and weekends to learn UNIX and figure out how to get everything running. Better cultivate some friends who know what's going on, or you might become very frustrated if you aren't a super genius. $5k would actually be on the low side, you probably couldn't get the multiport board, and that would mean using the two serial ports on your AT clone. This could make things hard, since you will probably want to keep one port/phone line clear for uucp transfers. But that is what I am going to try for now. (Pull down news at night on my voice line when I don't use it anyway; to avoid incoming data calls, I'll poll my feed, it won't poll me. Once I get things going I'll let select users dial in on my second phone line. When that starts to get crowded, I'll add a third phone line and a multiport board. At some point I'll start promoting my site, and if I get enough people hooked I'll start asking for a nominal fee to offset expansion costs. I figure I'll add a 5ESS switch and a 10 GB disk farm, along with my own power substation to guarantee continuous uptime... :-) You'll also have to get a newsfeed. You can buy one from uunet for a nice piece of change, but if you can swing a feed from a local site that will be cheaper. Start by scanning the map files for your locale and trying to get friendly. Dan Mocsny dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu
stevesc@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Schonberger) (12/08/89)
>In article <7183@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) writes: >>One of my friends in Boston has had a taste of netnews and wants more; anyone >> know of either 1: an inexpensive site that would give him access to news, or In article <3014@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes: >The public-access usenet sites have their own newsgroup hierarchy. >Check pubnet.nixpub for a listing of all known sites. If your site >does not carry this group, I'll mail you the latest listing. This is good advice. I got on to a public access site where I used to live when I was asked to stop carrying non-technical newsgroups on my site by looking through the nixpub list. That site was free. Others in that area were all very inexpensive. >Starting your own site is not really out of the question, if you have >about $5k to spend (386 AT clone with 4 MB RAM + >120 MB disk), UNIX Now this is not such useful information. It's quite wrong. I run a site of my own at home that I have less than $500 invested in. I had it running for a while on a $400 dual-floppy XT clone running DOS and UUPC. Although two 360K floppies were not enough space for me to take a news feed comfortably, I could have done it if I kept the feed small. Mail ran perfectly well on the dual-floppy system, and I didn't come close to running out of space. I since added a disk for about $80 (a controller at a discount store and a 10-meg drive that a friend gave me after upgrading), which gave me enough space for what is a _lot_ of news for one person. If all I had on it was mail and news, it would still be almost empty. Setting up the UUPC software was simple. I expaneded the UUPC ARC file, created directories as advised in the readme file, and arranged my mail and news feeds. My first link's uucp login script took some work to set up, but the other ones were pretty much like the readme suggested. Being a mail and uucp guru is helpful for having your own site, but not necessary. Having a $5000 system to run it on is nice, but not necessary. It can be done easily enough for $500, a few hours study, and some help from the administrators of the sites you'll be linked to. A lot of sites welcome links, and some even make it a point of pride to supply as many mail links as they can. -- Steve Schonberger microsoft!stevesc@uunet.uu.net "Working under pressure is the sugar that we crave" --A. Lamb
pcf@galadriel.bt.co.uk (Pete French) (12/08/89)
From article <3014@uceng.UC.EDU>, by dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny): > In article <7183@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) writes: >>One of my friends in Boston has had a taste of netnews and wants more; anyone >> know of either 1: an inexpensive site that would give him access to news, or > > Starting your own site is not really out of the question, if you have > about $5k to spend (386 AT clone with 4 MB RAM + >120 MB disk), UNIX [lots of stuff about how hard it is to set up a USENET site deleted] Actually it can be done far cheaper than that ... and with a lot less hassle. You can run a public access system off the back of an Atari ST quite happily as a bulletin board with USENET news and mail. I have a friend who did this - I suggest you contact him for more information. he should be contactable as chris@tharr.uucp , but if this doesnt work then try chris%tharr@kyns.co.bt.uk . -Pete. -- -Pete French. | "The rhythm's gone, British Telecom Research Labs. | The radio's dead. Martlesham Heath, East Anglia. | And the damage done, All my own thoughts (of course) | Inside my head."
ctne_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu (Chris Newbold) (12/13/89)
In article <9375@microsoft.UUCP> stevesc@microsoft.UUCP (Steve Schonberger) writes: >>In article <7183@pt.cs.cmu.edu>, jwz@spice.cs.cmu.edu (Jamie Zawinski) writes: >>>One of my friends in Boston has had a taste of netnews and wants more; anyone >>> know of either 1: an inexpensive site that would give him access to news, or > >In article <3014@uceng.UC.EDU> dmocsny@uceng.UC.EDU (daniel mocsny) writes: >>The public-access usenet sites have their own newsgroup hierarchy. >>Check pubnet.nixpub for a listing of all known sites. If your site >>does not carry this group, I'll mail you the latest listing. > >This is good advice. I got on to a public access site where I used to >live when I was asked to stop carrying non-technical newsgroups on my >site by looking through the nixpub list. That site was free. Others >in that area were all very inexpensive. > I too would like to start a single-user mail/news sight in the Boston area. I have both UUPC and Waffle software, and am now looking for a public-access system to receive a feed from. My system here does not get pubnet, so could someone mail me the list of sights in Boston? Also, how do I go about establishing a feed? Do I mail them and ask, or call on the phone? Any help on the process would be greatly appriciated!!! (If this is a dead subject for this group, please e-mail me, or do it anyway so as not to waste bandwidth). >>>> Chris Newbold <<<< * "If you fool around with a thing for very long you * University of Rochester * will screw it up." * Disclaimer: "All warranties expire upon payment of invoice." ctne_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu * uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ctne_ltd@uunet -- >>>> Chris Newbold <<<< * "If you fool around with a thing for very long you * University of Rochester * will screw it up." * Disclaimer: "All warranties expire upon payment of invoice." ctne_ltd@uhura.cc.rochester.edu * uhura.cc.rochester.edu!ctne_ltd@uunet