** Q **
Free Internet access for Atarians
 
I come across many references to the current crop of free internet-access 
schemes for PC users, and the give-away CD-ROMs from Dixons, Tandy, and 
Tesco. One Atari newsgroup carried a plea from an Atari-user for advice on 
how to set up Freeserve ISP with his machine.

Can your boffins outline briefly how we can all do this (perhaps even a 
concise article about it)? Yours a bit gormlessly...

Noel Lundgren

** A **

If you or a friend has a web connection with a secure browser, go to:

https://signup.freeserve.net

If you are using STinG and CAB (does CAB support secure pages?) the phone 
number in STinG is 08450796699, username is 'freeservesignup', password is 
'signup', nameservers are 194.152.64.68 and 194.152.64.25.

STinG needs to be set NOT to use a script - you probably need to enter 
those names and passwords under PAP-ID and PAP-PASSWORD.

Once you are on the page, you can set your preferred username and 
password. Apparently one should not end by clicking the button which says 
Finished because that starts downloading a file which is irrelevant. Just 
quit the browser and connection.

Now you need to enter your own details into STinG and your email client. 
For some reason freeserve has its addresses ending in both .co.uk and .net 
- I'm not sure if these are completely interchangable. Try what I have 
below, and change if it doesn't work.

Phone number as before, PAP-ID username.freeserve.co.uk, PAP-Password is 
your chosen password. Hostname is freeserve.co.uk. Your SMTP address for 
sending mail is smtp.freeserve.net

Your POP3 mailbox address for receiving mail may depend on your precise 
system. You may need an address of pop.freeserve.net and an account name 
of username.freeserve.co.uk, but I do know of systems where what you need 
to enter is username.freeserve.co.uk@pop.freeserve.net - experiment.

Daniel Cohen, CIX ataricomputing conference

** A **

The Reader Disk includes a STinG script which assumes you have already 
created the above details by logging on to freeserve using a friend's pc 
and the freeserve cd.

Apparently it is also possible to do this without the Freeserve cd, which 
should mean that you can do if using an Atari. From the freeserve 
conference here on CIX:

To signup to Freeserve without a cd and without changing any existing 
settings?

Enter freeservesignup for your username and signup for your password. Ok 
it and it will go online, wait until you get a connection and start up 
your browser (any browser that handles a secure connection should work).

Enter this URL: https://signup.freeserve.net (the http*s* is crucial)

Sign up online

When you've finished that you'll have a username and password and it will 
prompt you to download a file, either refuse, or download it and delete it 
later (it also contains your password).

Andrew Harvey, CIX


All the free services are concerned that people might signup with a false 
name, use it for spam or offensive messages, and then disappear. 
Freeserve's solution (I don't know the technicalities) is that the phone 
number from which you are calling must respond to Caller ID.

Daniel

The main problem as far as Atari users are concerned is that CAB (at 
least, for v2.5 and CAB.OVL v1.3014 beta) doesn't handle secure links so 
even if the on-line scripting wasn't a problem the secure link side of 
things would be.

To the best of my knowledge, the only way you can access Freeserve on an 
Atari is to have someone with a PC and IE set up your account. Once you 
have that, you're laughing because all of the settings are standard.

Keith Jackson

** A **

Edit STinG's DEFAULT.CFG and DIAL.SCR with your details. The DEFAULT.CFG 
file on the Reader Disk is in the progress of being "tweaked" for best 
performance, with the original values commented out for reference. Change 
modem port etc to suit your system.

If you'd like to be able to log in to another ISP as well, proceed as 
follows:

Copy the DIAL.SCR to the same directory, renaming it to reflect the name 
of the ISP that you want to log in to. Then list the details of your proxy 
servers under "Network Environment", see the DEFAULT.CFG file for the 
required format. Change phone numbers and password details and so on to 
suit. Now you can select this script in the STinG dialer by clicking in 
the "Dial script" line at the top of the "Configs" menu.

If you're experiencing problems making a successful connection:

It might be that your ISP doesn't use a PAP (Password Authenticated 
Protocol) connection. Try connecting with a terminal program with logging 
turned on, and respond to each of the questions with the details given to 
you by your ISP. Most likely you'll be asked for your login name and 
password, once you've logged in completely the screen should fill with 
indecipherable characters. Shut down the connection and edit the 
appropriate dial script referring to your log for details. There's an 
example script on the Reader Disk called EXSCRIPT.ASC.

If you've made a successful connection to your ISP (the STinG dialer 
reports "Link established" and "Success", but CAB seems to freeze with the 
message "Resolving host" proceed as follows:

Double check that you're using a STinG-compatible overlay. Double check 
the proxy server details in the DEFAULT.CFG or DIAL.SCR (where 
appropriate). Proxy server details in CAB listed under "Server/Proxy" may 
not be current however if overridden by others set in the DIAL.SCR.

If you're using the latest CAB overlay and there's a delay when browsing 
through your offline cache:

Load the dialer into memory alongside CAB. Single TOS users can rename the 
STinG dialer with an ACC extender and load it as an accessory - a 
recommended course of action anyway (you will need to copy the STING.INF 
file into the root directory of your boot disk as well). Or use Olivier 
Booklage's overlay version from 5.4000 onwards available from: 

http://194.2.128.248/vcf-com/download/cabovl.lzh

Derryck Croker, CIX ataricomputing conference