Frequently Asked Questions
about
Internet News



Q. What is Internet News?


Please choose below the News Program that you are using:

Outlook Express/Outlook 2000

Turnpike

Netscape



Outlook Express/Outlook 2000


Please click on any question for an detailed answer.


Q1.   I want to subscribe to particular News Group, how do I set up Outlook Express/Outlook2000 to receive News?

A1.    Firstly, you have to set up a News Account within Outlook Express

To do this please follow through the following:

Open Outlook Express, if you are prompted to connect then don't. There is no need to connect when configuring Outlook Express.



Goto the Tools Menu and Select Accounts.



Click on the News Tab and then select Add then News

Then enter your display name, click Next

Then enter your email address then click Next

Enter our news server name, and make sure that 'My news server requires me to log on' is NOT ticked, then click Next

Enter a name for this Account, and click Next

Choose, 'connect using my phone line', and then click Next


Choose MCB.NET as the dial-up connection, click Next.

Click Finish to save your News settings, then click close.

Outlook Express should now ask you to download a list of Newsgroups, click yes.

Once all the News Groups have been downloaded, you can search for the ones that you wish to subscribe to and then highlighting each specifc newsgroup and clicking Subscribe. For each newsgroup you subscribe to a small icon will appear to the left of that newsgroup to indicated that it has been subscribed to.

Once you have subscribed to the Newsgroups you want click the "Go to" button. This will then bring you back to the main Outlook Express window. Now if you click on one of the Newsgroup you should be able to read up-to-date News postings.

I must add at this point, that 'subscribing' to news groups does not cost anything extra as this is part of the MCB.NET service.





Turnpike

To add extra newsgroups to Turnpike proceed as follows:

Open the Turnpike Offline program, right click on the news stand and select Add newsgroups.

A new screen should now appear, on this screen click in the box for display all groups, this is located on the left hand side of the screen. Now in the main window a list of newsgroups should be displayed, due to the amount of newsgroups it would be impossible to search manually, so to speed things along you can search for the groups by name.

Select a newsgroup from the list of subscribed newsgroups displayed. Use click and shift-click to select several newsgroups

Click the Add button the selected newsgroup(s) will then appear in the lower box

Repeat until you have added all the newsgroups you require

Click the OK button.

And thats about all you need to add new newsgroups to Turnpike.

 

But what if..................................

Q. When I try to collect news I get an "Uexpected NEWS 5xx:502" error message?

A. This is almost certainly caused due to the news client being setup to use NewNEWs commands. The news server does not support these commands.

If you are using Turnpike Version 4.xx do the following:

  1. Open the Turnpike Connect Program but do not connect
  2. Select Configure
  3. Select News Collection
  4. Highlight news.mcb.net and click edit
  5. Uncheck the "NEWNEWS commands

When you next connect news should download correctly.

If you are using an earlier version than V4.xx then you should update to the latest copy of Turnpike

 

Netscape Communicator

Setting up newsgroups from within Netscape Communicator is done in a similar way to both of the above.

Open Netscape and select communicator from the top menu bar, from here select 'discussion groups' or 'internet news'this may vary depending on what version of communicator you are using. From the next window select file and then select subscribe to news/discussion groups, again the actual wording may differ slightly.

On the next screen that appears click on 'get groups', a list of newsgroups will now be collected and will collect any new news for you existing subscribed newsgroups.

To subscribe to new newsgroups simply type a search pattern into the search box on the top of the window, for example, to find MCB.NET newsgroups, type 'mcb', this will then show all the groups for MCB.NET. When the search has found the groups, expand the folder in the left column and click with the mouse on the dot under the subscribe column to subscribe to the new group.

After you have selected the new newsgroups you wish to subscribe to click OK to return to th Communicator main screen.