Subject: Accessing subscriber service news feed with Pine 3.91; How?

From: William Butler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 11 Apr 1996 10:56:22 -0700

Problem: - I want to access Usenet via a text-based browser.
         - The university I work for has no Usenet access, or software.
         - We have Pine 3.91 which I see has news reader capabilities.
         - I have Usenet access through Netscape (using a dial-up line)
           and an account on the news.alt.net server.
         - I must provide a username and password to access news.alt.net.

What I have tried:
         - RTFM: We have no hard copy manuals here on site (this
           according to the site administrator).
         - "Help":  The help facility has led me to the following:
                  - Using "Setup" and "Config" I have provided Pine with
                    the following "nntp-server = news.alt.net"
                  - "news-collections" has defaulted to
                    "<No Value Set: Using *{news.alt.net/nntp}[]"
         - FAQ:  I have read the FAQ at 
           ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/pine/docs/faq
           and what appears there is the same as what is in the Help
           facility of Pine.
         - Upon selecting "folders" from the main menu, I see the news
           folder, and try selecting it.  The following message appears:
           "[**Empty List** Select Here to Try Re-Expanding]"
         - I have tried adding newsgroups by specific name, and generic
           name, but get messages "[News group doesn't exist]" and
           "[No groups to select from]"
         - I have tried changing the nntp-server value to a nonsense
           server "my.news.server", but get a new message
           "[No such host as my.news.server]" so I am assuming that I
           am headed in the right direction when I do not get the message
           for "news.alt.net".
         - Usenet:  I'm happy to see this newsgroup, and what appears to
           be a busy, valuable and knowledgeable group of people (no
           sucking up intended, but I have seen some dangerous nonsense
           advise in other newsgroups ;) ).  I'm using Netscape to submit 
           this post, but I don't always have access to this machine  
           (it's at work, and my machine at home is best left out of the
           graphical end of computing).

So, what should I do?  Is it possible for me access news.alt.net using 
Pine?  Am I missing files? (I only have the .pinerc file, no .newsrc file.
Pine created a .news-state file, but it is empty.)  Should I hard
code my news.alt.net access username and password anywhere, and how?

Sorry I'm so confused.

Bill Butler
[email-masked]

One of these days I'll learn how to make short posts.