The Eastern Star Mail Hub Fidonet Via Your NNTP Newsreader. Configuring Mozilla Thunderbird. To Navigate This Presentation, Use your Left/Right Arrow Buttons, Press ESC To Exit.

Getting Started Using a Newsreader to collect, read and write messages in Fidonet is Quick, Easy and does not involve the setup of any DOS based software up to and including file compression programs.

What You Need To Know This is not usenet or regular newsgroups, there is no more danger of spam than there would be if you accessed Fidonet via other means or traditional methods. The server employed accesses a Fidonet message base and makes the conversion of the messages into the formats your newsreader can understand.

What You Need You should have already contacted The System Operator Of The Eastern Star Mail Hub, Ross Cassell and setup a logon name and password. Your logon name and password in hand. A copy of Mozilla Thunderbird Fired Up And Ready To Configure.

Step One On The Thunderbird Main Screen, As Shown On The Right, Select “Create A New account”

Step Two Do exactly As Illustrated on the right and then click NEXT.

Step Three Fill Out “YOUR” Full Name, not “MINE”, as illustrated on the right. Fill Out “YOUR” address and not “MINE”. Then click NEXT.

Step Four Fill out the “Newsgroup Server” field as illustrated on the right, “the- estar.com” then click NEXT.

Step Five Here is where you merely specify the name of the server so you can identify the account. This name will show up as the account name in the left pane, I suggest you use the illustrated example, but the name can be anything you choose. Then click NEXT.

Step Six You are not done yet, but you have a good start. Click FINISH.

Step Seven You are back on Thunderbirds Main Screen, make sure the account we just created is highlighted as illustrated on the right, then click on the link “View Settings For This Account”.

Step Eight The “Account Settings” window pops up, select “Server Settings” as illustrated on the right. As illustrated on the right make sure you change the server port to “1119”, and check the checkbox that says “Always request authentification when connecting to this server”. Click OK to save the changes and dismiss the Account Settings Window.

Step Nine Back on the Thunderbird main screen click on the link “Manage Newsgroup Subscriptions”.

Step Ten When this prompt pops up, input the logon name that you selected and check the checkbox for “Use Password Manager to remember this value.” Then click OK.

Step Eleven When this window pops up input your password and like you did in Step 10, put a check in the checkbox for “Use Password Manager to remember this password.” Then click OK.

Step Twelve Your reader will then connect to the server and pull down the list of areas, here is where you subscribe to the areas you wish to partake in, as illustrated on the right, put a checkbox next to each area you want to take and then click the “Subscribe” button, then click OK.

Step Thirteen As illustrated on the right, after you finish subscribing, you will be back at Thunderbirds Main Screen, there should be a + sign next to the news account, click on it to expand the tree to see the list of areas, choose an area to pull down a list of messages which will appear in the top right pane, you may get prompted on this download, just say to download all messages.

Step Fourteen To Change Areas, select it in the left pane, (remember step 13), to select or change messages, select them in the top right pane, the message body will appear in the bottom right pane. Unread Messages will appear in BOLD. Newsreaders do not thread messages the same as Fidonet BBS’s or readers, they generally thread by subject, so be sure to click the + sign next to messages that have them, its an indication of replies and additional messages on the subject.

Step Fifteen To reply to a message within an area, select the reply button and a window as illustrated on the right will open up, you can elect to reply via if you so choose, assuming you have an account configured within thunderbird. There is a drop down menu which should currently say “Newsgroup” which is what you want if you want to reply back into the area, else drop the menu down and change the method if you wish. After that type your reply and click SEND when done.

Step Sixteen To write a “NEW” Message, make sure you are in the area you want to post it in, then click the “WRITE” button, a window such as whats illustrated on the right will open up. On line 1, column 1 of the message body you must put “To:” followed by the persons full name that you wish to post it to, be sure to check the spelling, or you can put “All” if you want to post a new message to all. The rest of the message body is yours to fill up, click SEND when you are done.

Netmail! Assuming you subscribed to the netmail area in Step 12 (recommended), you can also send netmail, very similar to posting a new message as outlined prior, except in line 1, column 1 put “To:” followed by the persons name followed by a “,” and then the Fidonet node number, see the illustration to the right for an “example”. Do note that it is an example only, everyones node number is different. You can extrapolate a persons node number from the “Origin” line at the bottom of a persons messages.

Wrapping It Up! The Fidonet Node Number that you will be reading and posting from is 1:123/789. You are responsible for your conduct in the message areas, by that this means that if you violate the rules of a message echo and the moderator asks you to stop posting for a period of time, voluntarily comply, their next course of action if you refuse to comply is to ask that your access be physically cut, and their requests will be honored. I will terminate anyones access to the entire server who gets me an excessive amount of moderator requests. The Server is not a platform for SPAM, advertising or other annoying activities. This Is The End… ENJOY!