derek@leah.albany.edu (Cinderella Man) (12/07/90)
I tried to get mail through to the author of the program, but the uunet bang-path address given in the readme file bounced, so I'm hoping someone can help here (or that he reads this group). I've FTPed the Mac NNTP news reader TheNews 1.0 from one of the ftp archives, and I'm very impressed with it so far -- it looks fast and easy to use. Unfortunately, I can't get it to work! I've read the manual provided back-to-front, and I can't see anything wrong at this end, so I'll lay out the errors, and perhaps someone can figure out the problem. Hardware specifics: I'm running a Mac IIci with 4mb of RAM, an 80mb internal hard drive, an Apple 13" high-res monitor, an Apple SCSI CD-ROM player, and a Novell EtherPort II ethernet card. Software specifics: I'm using System 6.0.5 (it's given me the least problems), under MultiFinder. I've got AppleShare workstation software loaded, along with EtherTalk (2.01 -- AppleTalk phase 2) available from the Network cDev. I'm using MacTCP 1.0.1a2 as an Internet driver. I use the BYU version of NCSA Telnet 2.3.1, along with the latest version of Brown U.'s TN3270 program, both with no problems. I've also tested Steve Dorner's Eudora program, which seems to work fine. Now to the situation: The program boots fine. I set the IP address for my local NNTP server, and select "New" from the File menu. A dialog box appears, whipping through all of the available newsgroups on my server. After this, a window pops up with the names of the groups I can read. So far, so good and normal. It's at this point when the problems show up. If I select a group name and "add"/subscribe to it, it pops up a dialog box which (I believe) is checking the status of that group on the server. The number of messages then listed in the main window is invariably "0 unread 1 available". If I select the "Read" item from the Groups menu, it will bring up a blank screen. No group ever has any messages available for reading. (I use this server for reading/posting news through rrn on another Unix system, and it works fine.) That's not the most aggravating problem, however. After it's checked the server the first time (using the "New" command), and listed all the available groups, if I try to save my newsgroup list (through "Save" or "Save As...") the Mac freezes completely. This happens whether I change nothing, add one group to my subscribed list, or add a bunch. Total system freeze. I have not been able to get past these problems. I've repeated them at least a dozen times. I've changed my system configuration, removing all INITs/cDevs (except for the basic Apple set, Network, and MacTCP); I've booted under MultiFinder, Finder, changed the memory allocation of the application, turned off the RAM cache, basically everything I can think of, but the problems remain the same. I'm pretty convinced it's a conflict with the IIci itself, but hopefully not (it wasn't one of the machines mentioned as a test Mac). I hope the information I've provided will be enough to guess at the source of the problem, even sight unseen; any help is greatly appreciated. thanks, Derek L. -- + + "When nothing else remains, one must scream. Silence is the ultimate + + + crime against humanity." -- Nadezhda Mandelstam + + _________________________ [Affix disclaimer here] _________________________ + + + + + Each one's life a novel no one else has read -- Peart + + + +
rainwatr@ucunix.SAN.UC.EDU (Don Rainwater) (12/08/90)
In article <1990Dec7.091005.28377@sarah.albany.edu> derek@leah.albany.edu (Cinderella Man) writes: [Paraphrased - indicated by [ ] throughout. ] > [ Mac NNTP news reader, TheNews 1.0. Looks impressive. Won't work. ] > [ Read the manual. No luck.] Me too. >Hardware specifics: > [ Mac IIci, 4Mb, 80Mb disk, 13" RGB, CD-ROM, Novell EtherPort II. ] >Software specifics: > [ System 6.0.5, MF, AppleShare, EtherTalk 2.01 Phase 2, MacTCP. ] > [ BYU/NCSA Telnet 2.3.1, Brown U. TN3270, Eudora. ] Mac II, 8Mb, 40 Mb disk, 13" RGB, Novell EtherPort II. System 6.0.5, MF, Appleshare, EtherTalk 2.01 Phase 2, MacTCP, DEC LANworks software (DECnet, LAT, Comm Toolbox, etc.) SU/MacIP, BYU/NCSA Telnet 2.3.1, MacX, MacTerminal, HyperFTP, HyperCard NewsReader Stack all work fine for me. >Now to the situation: > The program boots fine. I set the IP address for my local NNTP >server, and select "New" from the File menu. I found a problem with the IP address field. It doesn't seem to be big enough. It should be able to handle an address like ###.###.###.###, but it won't. It seems to be two [bytes,chars,digits] short. Fortunately, I have a news machine here that will fit into the field, but the machine that I want to use (since I am the sys/news admin) has an IP address that won't fit. > [ Dialog box appears, listing available newsgroups from server. ] > [ Window appears with names of groups. ] > [ "Add group" to subscribe. Status always "0 unread 1 available". ] > [ "Read" brings blank window. No group ever has any messages. ] > [ rrn from another machine to this news server works fine. ] Same thing happens to me. As listed above, I have used the HyperCard Newsreader Stack to access the news from the same machines here, and have had no trouble (it's just slow, being HyperCard :). > [ Most aggravating part --> after getting the newsgroup list, trying to ] > [ save the list (with "Save" or "Save as...") freezes the Mac. ] > [ Happens with no changes, adding only one group, or adding several. ] I get 'The application has unexpectedly quite (-1)'. I'm then back at the desktop. If I switch to another application, everything's okay, but if I try to launch (foolishly) TheNews again, my system locks up too. > I have not been able to get past these problems. I've repeated them >at least a dozen times. I've changed my system configuration, removing all >INITs/cDevs (except for the basic Apple set, Network, and MacTCP); I've >booted under MultiFinder, Finder, changed the memory allocation of the >application, turned off the RAM cache, basically everything I can think of, >but the problems remain the same. I'm pretty convinced it's a conflict >with the IIci itself, but hopefully not (it wasn't one of the machines >mentioned as a test Mac). Well, I can confirm that it's not a IIci problem, since my system is a Mac II. I tried most of the same things to get it to work, without luck. > I hope the information I've provided will be enough to guess at the >source of the problem, even sight unseen; any help is greatly appreciated. Hopefully, this information will shed even more light on the problem so that it can be fixed. TheNews looks like a slick program, and it's really fast. BTW, would it be that much more trouble to resolve a host name rather than requiring the IP number? -- Don Rainwater, Systems Manager/Postmaster, Univ. of Cincinnati Computer Center Don.Rainwater@UC.Edu rainwatr@ucunix.san.uc.edu rainwatr@ucbeh.bitnet ...!uccba!ucunix!rainwatr
khaw@parcplace.com (Mike Khaw) (12/08/90)
I also had problems getting TheNews 1.0 to run on my IIci, but it was
pretty obvious that the problem was the IP Server address refusing to
accept more than 13 characters. I sent an email to
iex!cramer@uunet.uu.net and he responded in <24 hours with TheNews 1.1,
which appears to work fine for reading. I haven't yet tried posting.
EMail seems to disappear into a black hole, but then my NNTP server
isn't domain-smart, so I'm not surprised (my NNTP host is not my mail
gateway).
--
Mike Khaw
ParcPlace Systems, Inc., 1550 Plymouth St., Mountain View, CA 94043
Domain=khaw@parcplace.com, UUCP=...!{uunet,sun,decwrl}!parcplace!khawMats.Sundvall@BMC.UU.SE (12/10/90)
In article <535@ucunix.SAN.UC.EDU> rainwatr@ucunix.SAN.UC.EDU (Don Rainwater) writes: >In article <1990Dec7.091005.28377@sarah.albany.edu> derek@leah.albany.edu (Cinderella Man) writes: > [Paraphrased - indicated by [ ] throughout. ] >> [ Mac NNTP news reader, TheNews 1.0. Looks impressive. Won't work. ] >> [ Read the manual. No luck.] > > Me too. > Not me. I am using it to post this article, Mac II Ci, but not with ethertalk. Localtalk via a Gatorbox. It works both with system 6.05 and the 7.0 beta. I had similar problems with empty groups before I enabled access in my nntp server for the news client. It is a very nice and fast program but could be improved. I would like to see the machin "preference" within the saved file. This would make it very easy to use several different newsservers with different groups. Now I have to manually change the address and then open the file. Another suggestion would be to make the read forward command to pass newsgroup boundaries. Now you have to close the newsgroup and open the next. Read an entry and then do read forward. Mats Sundvall Dept of Medical Genetics, Uppsala University, Uppsala Sweden
mst@mx.csun.edu (Mike Temkin) (12/18/90)
In article <1990Dec10.124859.76@bio.embnet.se> Mats.Sundvall@BMC.UU.SE writes: >It is a very nice and fast program but could be improved. I would like >to see the machin "preference" within the saved file. This would make >it very easy to use several different newsservers with different groups. Now I >have to manually change the address and then open the >file. >Another suggestion would be to make the read forward command to pass >newsgroup boundaries. Now you have to close the newsgroup and open the next. >Read an entry and then do read forward. > > Mats Sundvall Those are suggestions that I would like to see, but would like the option of having my newsgroup data file in the same format that rn uses. That way I could mount my UNIX account via NFS or AppleShare and use it for both TheNews (at work) and rn (at home). Mike. -- Mike Temkin mst@csun.edu Cal. State U. Northridge, School of Engineering and Computer Science Voice phone: (818) 885-3919