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Subject Topic: A quick guide to newsgroups (usenet) (Topic Closed Topic Closed) Post ReplyPost New Topic
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Mojo Jojo
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Posted: 30 March 2006 at 7:45am | IP Logged  

ok, for all who are interested in using usenet here is a quick guide and some links to setting it up as it is not just installing the software and off you go. You need to have a usenet server account. With every isp I have come across, you get access to a free newsgroup server. You can usually find out what your details are from your isp website.

For example: my isp (Pipex) has access to giganews. I log in with the server address "nntp.dsl.pipex.com" and use my login details my isp provides. You can probably find your details on your isp website or on this website.

Some newsgroup servers are better than others. The three main factors which determine how good they are:

Binary Retention: this is how long the newsgroup server holds onto a file for. For example, giganews has a 60 day retention, which means I can download things that were posted 60 days ago. Some servers only have a weeks retention.

Download limit: some newsgroup servers give you a limit on how much you can download. My free giganews account give me a limit of about 5 - 10 gigs. If I wanted to pay for better access, I could get 25 gigs for $12.99 (approx £6), or unlimited for $24.99. Other free isp usenet servers have unlimited download, but poor retention.

Download Speed/Connections: The number of connections means that the software can connect to the same server with the same log in simultaneously and thus download faster. With my free server, I am limited to 20 Kb/sec per connection, and I have 2 connections (so thats a max speed of 40 Kb/sec). Again, if I paid for giganews I would get 10 connections, each one running at an uncapped speed (as far as I know it is uncapped, it could be 200 kB/sec per connection).

OK, I might be selling giganews a little hard, but I think its the best out there (if you want to pay for one). There are loads of others you can subscribe to, but I think you should just try out your free one you get with your isp.

As for software, again there are loads to choose from, some free, some you can find with bittorrent. The two best ones are probably newsbin pro, and newsleecher. The reason they are so good is because they support news binaries. I wont bother to explain the pain of not using news binaries or nzb's, but trust me when I say it's a real pain not using them. Using them makes finding and downloading stuff with usenet as easy as bittorrent.

Newsleecher is the best software to use in my humble opinion. Once it's installed, simply put in your usenet server details and log in info, how many simultaneous connections you want to use and hit connect. Double click on the nzb file you want to download and bingo, you're off.

Errors in the file: Most of the time when you download something from newsgroups there are small errors in the file. Don't worry, this is normal. When you use nzb's you also get par2 files as well as rar files. These par2 files fix all errors in the rar files. You need to download quickpar (its free) in order to fix them. All the files should be in the same directory, and once you have quickpar installed, just double click on the par2 file and it will check the rar's. If everything is ok then nothing needs to be done. If there are errors, you just click repair and the par2 files will repair the errors and you can then decompress your rar's.

Some useful links
Slicks guide to The Newsgroups - a much more comprehensive guide t o everything newsgroups

NZB-Zone - The best free place to get your nzb files.

Usenet Tools - Usenet tools and stuff. Inluding a big list of what your isp newsgroup server address will be.


Quickpar for Windows


If there is anything else, just ask and I'll update the guide.

Edited by Mojo Jojo on 30 March 2006 at 8:02am


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greg
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Posted: 30 March 2006 at 10:08am | IP Logged  

i cant seem to get a working copy of newsleecher and newsbin i cant get to search.

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Mojo Jojo
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Posted: 30 March 2006 at 12:42pm | IP Logged  

use mininova to get a working copy of newsleecher (make sure you read the readme).

Don't use the software for searching for stuff, use nzbzone.com

Edited by Mojo Jojo on 30 March 2006 at 12:42pm


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Nhumrod
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Posted: 30 March 2006 at 6:07pm | IP Logged  

ill find out which servers I use - myself and a mate have an unlimited account that we share...

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Nhumrod
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Posted: 30 March 2006 at 6:07pm | IP Logged  

oh, and I use newsbin pro as my client

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Shadetail
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Posted: 31 March 2006 at 8:44am | IP Logged  

i didnt get a single word of that mojo. lol.

 

 

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greg
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Posted: 03 April 2006 at 9:22pm | IP Logged  

how do you use nzbzone moj?

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Mojo Jojo
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Posted: 03 April 2006 at 11:29pm | IP Logged  

on the left there is a search box.

Search what you want, or browse by category. It will bring up a list of hits. Pick what you want, then you will get an option to select the parts of the file. You will then be able to download an nzb file. You open the nzb file with newsleecher or newsbin pro. This will add all the files into the news reader and it will start to download the files.

get it?

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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 11:56am | IP Logged  

has anyone got a working copy of newsleecher or newsbin pro?

going to have a go again but cant seem to find a decent client

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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 12:08pm | IP Logged  

and where to get nzb from, nzbzone is dead?

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Nhumrod
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 3:00pm | IP Logged  

www.newzbin.com

 



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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 3:08pm | IP Logged  

I got android news downloader which seems to work ok.

virgin.net newgroups seem to be quite limited.

what do you guys tend to get off usenet, at the mo i cant see what to get which i cant get off torrent more easily.

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Mojo Jojo
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 3:45pm | IP Logged  

best thing about newsgroups is that with a good server, you can download at your max download, not upload anything, and not have to wait at all for downloading it (and with a good server you dont have to worry about the seed file going missing half way though a download)

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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 4:24pm | IP Logged  

hmm i guess. could be good for whole dvd's etc.

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Mojo Jojo
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 5:06pm | IP Logged  

ohh yeah, you usually get things first on usenet...like, my mate could get lost a day before i could get it.

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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 9:08pm | IP Logged  

No new sign ups on newzbin.com, do you have to sign up to get the nzb files?

any other sites?

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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 9:42pm | IP Logged  

right i appear to be downloading wedding crashers DVDrip nice and quick. is there any tweaking to be done. im not maxing out but then this connection is turning out to be an unreliable heap of virgin/ntl sh*t atm.

getting about 350-400KB/s.

i'm assuming i dont have a limit on virgin news server itself, i cant seem to find anything to say so on their website.

Edited by greg on 26 July 2006 at 9:44pm


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greg
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Posted: 26 July 2006 at 11:45pm | IP Logged  

can someone explain why i have supposedly got this whole film, but im missing lots of the rar files, and seem to have duplicates of others, so i seem to have to go through and work out what im missing and get them all individually?

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Nhumrod
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 8:55am | IP Logged  

you should have some PAR files as well. You need to download quickpar. Then run it against the par files and itll check your rar files and rebuild any that are missing.



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greg
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Posted: 27 July 2006 at 9:28am | IP Logged  

Hmm I had to go through and download the missing rars, i'm not sure why I didn't get them in the first place, but there wasn't a nzb I could download from the server so I had to make my own which might have been why.

But yep then got Quick Par on it and got them repaired and I appear to have a complete film, 1.5gb in just a few hours, very canny

Ok so next question, I tried getting another film, which had its own NZB file on the server, so I just added that, but i think it was invalid, so again I had to go back, find all the individual rar files, then make my own NZB. Is that the usual or is there an easier way?

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