3.392 on Bitnet lists (149)

Willard McCarty (MCCARTY@VM.EPAS.UTORONTO.CA)
Thu, 24 Aug 89 18:38:09 EDT


Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 3, No. 392. Thursday, 24 Aug 1989.

Date: Thu, 24 Aug 89 12:49 EST
From: Terrence Erdt <ERDT@VUVAXCOM>
Subject: documentation on BITNET lists (136 lines)

David Megginson inquired about two lists about which he had
been unable to obtain information (Humanist vol. 3, no. 383)--
MINIX-L and ATARI16. Some Humanists may not be aware of the
BITNET documentation that should be available on
their local systems or that can be gotten from what are
known as netservs. Since the computer support people
on my campus generally are not very knowledgeable about
the uses of networks such as BITNET and since they
don't periodically update local files, I occasionally
download some of the documentation available from
netserv@bitnic, such as the lastest lists of nodes and
listservs. Christopher Condon (bitlib@yalevm) has written
up the basic instructions for doing this sort of browsing
and searching around BITNET, as in "Bitnet for the Compleat
Idiot," which is contained in one of the basic BITNET
resource files. Besides a list of the listservs on BITNET,
there is one containing ARPANET lists--again this is standard
documentation that ought to be on one's local system,
but that can be gotten from netserves, such as the
one at BITNIC. To begin a quest for the files, you
might want to try the interactive commands (of
course you can send the messages via e-mail instead):

(VM/CMS systems) TELL NETSERV AT MARIST GET BITNET USERHELP

(VAX/VMS) SEND NETSERV@BITNIC "GET BITNET USER HELP"

The file that provides a run down of BITNET lists
contains the following information about the two
discussion groups that David inquired about:



INFO-ATARI <INFO-ATARI8@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU>
<INFO-ATARI16@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU>

Discussions of 8- and 16-bit Atari computers and related topics.
Commercial messages and advertisements are not permitted.

Archives are kept in several places in formats available to everyone; all
digests are in the archives, and there is a separate program library. As
described below, if you are on ARPANet/DDN you will probably find it more
convenient to retrieve files from the archive on RADC-SOFTVAX.ARPA using
FTP. If you are not on ARPANet/DDN, or are unable to use FTP, you will be
able to retrieve files from archives distributed over several Bitnet hosts
by sending mail (notes) to a program called LISTSERV.

Files from RADC-SOFTVAX.ARPA are available by FTP. There are two
directories under the anonymous account: one for atari8 and one for
atari16. FTP to radc-softvax using login:guest and password:guest. To
get the current list of available atari16 files do a 'get
atari16/files.doc'.

LISTSERV provides access to files for everyone who can send mail,
independent of their location. On Bitnet messages should be sent to
your nearest LISTSERV (the one from which you receive the info-atari
digests); if your address is not on Bitnet, an address for file servers
is given below. All mail sent to LISTSERV contains command lines.
LISTSERV will respond by return mail. No subject is necessary in such
mail. For more information send the command
INFO

The list_name for 16-bit Ataris is INFO-A16. The list_name for 8-bit
Ataris is INFO-A8. These list names are used by Bitnet addressees
for subscribing and unsubscribing and by everyone for obtaining back
copies of news digests. The list_names for programs stored in the
archives are PROG-A16 and PROG-A8.

You can obtain copies of files from LISTSERV by sending a message in
the specified format. To obtain a list of files in the file server,
the command is
INDEX list_name
The command to obtain a specific file is
GET list_name file_name
for example, GET INFO-A16 87-00076
If you want to learn more, send the message
HELP

If you are on Bitnet you may add or remove yourself from the
distribution list. The command to join the list is
SUBSCRIBE list_name User_name
The command to remove yourself from the list is
UNSUBSCRIBE list_name

If you are on ARPAnet (or gatewayed to it), your mail concerning
16-bit Atari information should be addressed to
LISTSERV%CANADA01.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU. Mail concerning 8-bit
Atari information should be addressed to
LISTSERV%TCSVM.BITNET@WISCVM.WISC.EDU.

Administrative messages should be sent to
info-atari8-request@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU or
info-atari16-request@SCORE.STANFORD.EDU.

Moderators:
(Un)Subscribing problems:
Harry Williams <harry%MARIST.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
16-bit digest archives:
Peter Jasper-Fayer <sofpjf@UOGUELPH.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
16-bit program archives:
Richard Werezak <carson@MCMASTER.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
8-bit archives:
John Voigt <sysbjav@TCSVM.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
8-bit program archives:
Arnold de Leon <adeleon@HMCVAX.BITNET@CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>.

INFO-MINIX@UDEL.EDU

Mailing list for the discussion of the Minix Operating System: a Version 7
Unix clone written for IBM Compatible PCs by Andy Tanenbaum
(minix@vu44.uucp or minix@CS.VU.NL).

This list is gatewayed to the BITNET list MINIX-L@NDSUVM1 which in turn is
gatewayed to the USENET newsgroup comp.os.minix.

Unofficial archives are kept on host SIMTEL20 as TOPS20 mail files named
yymm.n-TXT, where n starts with one and increments by one into another file
as each file reaches 150 disk pages. To conserve disk space, all the mail
files in the archive, except for the current year, are individually
compressed. The compressed files have the suffix -Z as part of the
filetype field; they should be renamed to have the suffix .Z (uppercase Z)
when transfered to a Unix system so the uncompress program will find them.
The current month's mail is still kept in "MINIX-ARCHIV.TXT". The archives
are stored in directory "PD2:<ARCHIVES.MINIX>". Archive files are
available via ANONYMOUS FTP from SIMTEL20 for those with TCP/IP access to
the Internet.

Archives are also available from a number of other sources, including a
mail server. Further information can be obtained by sending a request to
INFO-MINIX-REQUEST@UDEL.EDU.

All requests to be added to or deleted from this list, problems, questions,
etc., should be sent to INFO-MINIX-REQUEST@UDEL.EDU.

List Maintainer: James Galvin <galvin@UDEL.EDU>