     NewsBin: News Robot for 95 and NT

Thank you for trying NewsBin.  If you have comments, suggestions for
improvements, or, heaven forbid, bug reports - please contact us at
tech_support@newsbin.com

For the latest version and other product information, visit our web
site at http://www.newsbin.com

INTRODUCTION:

Are you tired of having to manually download newsgroup binaries?
Well Newsbin is for you. Newsbin, the unattended and automatic newsgroup
downloader and decoder, short circuits the whole process by combining a
downloader, grouper and decoder into one package. Newsbin has many
features:

    - Shareware - test it for 15 days if you like it then you pay the $29.95.

    - Tested on Win95 and Windows NT over SLIP, PPP and Ethernet

    - Unattended downloads - connect and let it download your groups
        while you do something more interesting.

    - Isn't a resource hog. It is a good Windows multitasker meaning
        that you can still use your machine for other things while the
        downloads take place.

    - Groups news records together then automatically downloads and decodes
        multipart posts

    - Allows you to download a complete list of newsgroups that your
        server supplies.

    - Supports multiple servers - it will download from a list of
        servers found in the INI file. When it finishes with one server, it
        will go on to the next one in the list.

    - Supports unlimited newsgroups. Only you RAM limits the number.
        I've tested with 10,000 groups. It groaned some but ran.

    - Knows the SOCKS protocol, can get through firewalls even if your
        protocol stack can't. Simply add the socks server to the INI file.
        use the INI file that follows as a model.

    - Knows how to authenticate on multiple news servers

    - Gives a complete list of posters to the various groups. If uses on
        non binary groups will return a total unique list of poster id's.

    - You get all this in a program that is under 200K

PURCHASING NEWSBIN:

Newsbin can be purchased online from this site using a secure web
connection or by calling 1-800-242-4775 extension 15435.

For international and Texas resident sales, call:  (713) 524-6394 and
ask for product 15435.

To purchase via check or money order, make the check out to Compusoft
for $29.95 US funds and send to Compusoft, 2970 Emerald Chase Dr.,
Herndon, VA 20171.

Fax sales to: (713) 524-6398 and include your name, credit card type and
number, expiration date, email address, and product number 15435.  You
can download a fax form from our web site.

REGISTRATION:

After over 12000 downloads this year, we only have 150 registered users.
To encourage registration, version 2.0 has been changed to nag you to
register and will expire 15 days after installation.  We hope that this,
coupled with our recent ability to take credit card orders, will help
increase the number of registrations.

If you like our product, please register it. Any income receive from
this shareware will encourage us to continually improve NewsBin and
possibly develop more cool shareware programs in the future.

All existing registered users will be grandfathered in using the old
terms. This means that those of you kind enough to register before will
still get perpetual upgrades. New subscribers will get one major revision
upgrade for free including free bug fixes in between.


New Features of 2.03:

    - built in web server. Share files with your friends - preview them yourself
        Registered user can publish downloaded product. Complete with access
        list to control who connects. Authentication and performance enhancements
        are possible for custom development at additional cost. The program saves
        details about a the downloaded files in a directory under each download
        directory called "dsc". This will be optional in future releases.

    - Enhanced authentication and server menu. Now supports individual passwords
        for each server. Can now control ordering if news servers. Currently
        the servers are accessed in stagered fashion. Each server is hit in turn
        for the same group (this could be changed if enough of you don't like it).

    - When using directory mode, the files are saved no more then one
        directory depth under the current one. This reduces the traversing through
        directories that was always a pain in the ass. For a group line alt.fun
        the directory names would be <download directory>\alt.fun. This may
        cause problems for older DOS or 16 bit Windows based viewers and
        decoders. If you don't like it let me know. Maybe it could be optional.


    - Digital signature support. The first 4K of every file downloaded
        is hashed and saved to a file called "sigfile.dat" in the current
        directory. This signiture is used to verify that a file has been
        downloaded already or not. Remove, rename or move the file if you
        want to bypass the caching. This method is much more reliable then
        filenames since the spammers change the names often for the same binaries.

        Remove the file "sigfile.dat" to clear the signature files.


    - Passcode registration. Registered users will get a passcode to
        authenticate their shareware copies of newsbin.

    - Thanks to Derik we have a Spam filter. In the settings menu item
        you can set the maximum crossposts. When a post is found, the number
        of crossposts is compared to this value. Any file crossposted to too
        many groups is dropped. Since most spam is heavily crossposted this
        catches alot. I run with this set to 6.

    - Almost all configuration has been moved into the registery.


    - Now able to set an upper limit to how many records it searches in
        a newsgroups. For example I use 400 since there are seldom more then
        400 posts netween downloads.

    - Main window is smaller now to support all you poor people running
        640x480 screen res. 1.64 and before were designed with 800x600 in
        mind.

    - multipart mime posts supported.

    - Terminate a download on the fly by clicking the associated button

    - Total file download bytes recorded at top of window.

    - File size listed with name

    - Mime support

    - Only RAM limits the number of groups.

    - Automatically retrys connection's to the server until manually
        terminated. If your ISP disconnects you and Win95/NT reconnects you
        then you should never lose a single post.

    - THOROUGHLY tested. More then 1 gig downloaded without a crash at
        speeds up to 1.54 Mbps over a T1 on a P90.

    - new mime and uudecoder that runs 3 times faster then before.

    - Newsgroup downloads now redirected to the groups dialog box to
        make selection easier. The groups are searchable now in the groups
        dialog box.

BUG FIXES:

2.01 - Fix crash if news server is down or no ISP connection.
2.02 - Fix for download directory mode
2.03 - Fix for Typhoon News Servers

USING NEWSBIN:

    1) The start button starts it

    2) The stop button terminates it.

    3) When running the pause button pauses it.

    4) As files are being download you can abort a particular file
    by clicking on it's button. Sometimes it takes a few seconds but
    you should see "File Download Aborted" in the status window. What
    ever part of the file has already been downloaded will be deleted.

    5) The files knob allows you to crank up or turn down the maximum
    number of threads that will simultaneously download files. Most of
    the time I run 2 threads. This seems to work best for 28800
    connections. Once over a satallite link I got maximum throughput
    with 6 threads but, normally this only causes thrashing. Set it to
    zero and when the current files are downloaded it will pause the
    program. Simply turn them back up to continue.

    Recommended settings:

    28.8 - 2-3 on the file knob
    56K  - 3-5
    Faster - use all 6. I saturate a T1 with 6 threads.



    6) The setup menu hides a few more settings including

        a) The detail button is for the geeks out there (and me). It
        allows you to see the details of the NNTP transfers as they take
        place. It doesn't effect the actual download.

        b) add and delete servers and groups.

        c) The autostart menu option - if set the program will start
        downloading automatically when started.

        d) The group directories mode turns on downloading to specific
            directories. For example if the download path is set to
            C:\DOWNLOAD and the group is "alt.bunnies" then the actual
            download directory will be C:\DOWNLOAD\ALT\BUNNIES. The
            program will create the new directories for the newsgroups
            but assumes that the download path already exists.

            Note: If you set this you MUST shutdown the program and
            restart for directory mode to work. The directories are
            created at startup time.



Data Files:

    There are a number of data files that newsbin creates in order to
    maintain knowledge of the download processing between runs. These
    are:

CACHE - cache of subject fields we've seen - used to ignore cross posts
    and to try to avoid duplication

FILECACH - cache of filenames - used to ignore cross posts and to try to
    avoid duplication

GROUPS.DAT - default file for subscribed groups - this file name can be
    changed in the INI file.

GROUPS.LST - current list of all groups found in server 0 of the INI
    file. Used when we select groups to use.

REVISION HISTORY

New for Rev 1.64 - More Small enhancements and Bug Fixes.

    - Bar gauges that show current download status for every file.

    - Authenticated server support.

    - Better decoder.

    - Support for alternate ports.

    - Auto start and Auto stop now work right.

    - More robust menues.

    - By setting Clean Sweep mode the program will ignore old downloads
      and extract every header in a group. It still uses the cache so
      most posts under a week old should still be rejected.

New for Rev 1.63 - Small enhancements and Bug Fixes.

    - Save the current status of the download after every group - this
      prevents crashes from screwing up all of the status saved up to the
      point of the crash.

    - Support for Directory tree breakout, files can be downloaded to
      directories that mirror the news group directories.

    - Modern UUEncoding replaces all spaces with ` symbols. I was
      stripping spaces out, damaging files. No more.

    - still got the menu deletion bugs. Edit the INI file by hand for
      best results at least until I get off my ass.

New for Rev 1.62

    - 1.62 is basically a bug fix. It fixes the more then 10 record
      bug that was reported by several users.

    - It fixes the crash problem on Win95. Win95 has a serious bug in
      the shutdown command. This command is used to perform a quick
      shutdown of a socket. Under NT it works great, under 95 it often
      blows up the kernel in the of the VXD's like VTDI or IFSMGR. I
      blew it when I released 1.61 with this command enabled. I had been
      experimenting with NT and forgot to remove it.

    - NewsBin still has those minor INI deletion bugs. Since I wanted
      1.62 to be a fix for critical errors I chose to put off fixing
      them until the next major release.


New for Rev 1.61

    Rev 1.61 has been completely revamped. It now downloads on the fly
    using threads which are handed all the information they need to
    perform a download. While the download takes place, the header
    records are still downloaded. This mechanism was suggested by a
    user. It maximizes the use of modem bandwidth.

    - Files are downloaded as they are recognized instead of after all of the
      headers are downloaded.

    - As many as 9 simultaneous files can be downloaded. Threads are selectable
      from the front panel. I don't recommend using more then 4 or 5 threads
      unless you have a special application.

    - Flushing of records is a thing of the past. When a thread
      determines that a records isn't part of a file or that the file
      already exists, it simply dumps the socket and the thread and
      starts processing the next record. This greatly reduces the
      bandwidth usage.

    - can be paused by setting the threads to zero. Once the current
      downloads are complete the program will simply wait until you turn
      the threads up again.

    - subject fields are cached in a file for a week. This reduces the
      unwanted downloads that can occur if you delete a file in the
      download directory but later re-download the header records for
      it.
