gopher and Michnet PPP

Dec 30 17:24 UTC 1993

Can anyone tell me how to set up gopher, mosaic, or other
"advanced" Internet software to work with Michnet and PPP?
I have a Michnet authorization account, and Merit's PPP stacks
for Mac and DOS (fairly old ones -- is that a problem?).
I can use Fetch on the Mac and NCSA's FTPBIN from DOS.
But the gpher documentation I downloaded from Minnesota
says to use some other stacks or drivers (I think Clarkson's
SLIP for DOS).  My Mac II hung and trashed the finder when
I tried to run Turbogopher client.
I guess what I'd really like to know is, can these varoius free
components be made to work together without spending a week
fussing and tweaking, or should I go buy "internet in a box"
or something from one of the commercial providers.
Is there a FAQ or cheat sheet somewhere that spells out which
versions work with each other, and what memory and operating
systems versions are needed?  

response 2 of 110:

Dec 31 08:00 UTC 1993

Actually I wish I could do what you are attempting charlesm, but I
don't have the authentication. You'll never get Turbogopher or
Mosaic to run using SLIP, because Michnet treats SLIP like 
unauthenticated PPP, and those clients will only run if they can
get out from MichNet.

Since you said you can run Fetch, I think you probably already know
this, but just in case:  PPP is not a protocol stack (packet driver)
for the Mac, it is a LAP or mdev. You must also have MacTCP which is
an Apple product and costs $. If you have it, have you selected PPP
in the MacTCP control panel, and specified your authentication in the
'config PPP' control panel?

If you don't have MacTCP, you can most easily get it (I believe) by
purchasing Adam Engst's book on the internet as seen from a Mac.
I forget the title, but it comes with a disk containing MacTCP
and a lot of other stuff like fetch, etc.

response 4 of 110:

Dec 31 21:43 UTC 1993

You're right rcurl, he must hace MacTCP. MacTCP also provides the
API for programs to call to use TCP/IP. THus it fills the role of
the "sockets" API on unix, and Winsock on Windows. The API is
different though.

I am sure I could figure out Mosaic. I got the client program,
MacTCP and PPP. It won't work though, because it can't send packets
outside of MichNet because I'm not on the faculty at UofM.
Merit wants an awful lot of money for an authentication account.

response 6 of 110:

Jan 3 06:23 UTC 1994

Tell us more about mosaic, srw: maybe a new item?

response 8 of 110:

Jan 3 19:01 UTC 1994

1.  yes, I have a copy of MacTCP as well as Merit's PPP for mac.
I don't know if there are possible version conflicts.
2.  I have a Michnet authorization account so I can access sites
outside of Michigan.
3.  I read that WinMOSAIC needs Winsock but don't know where to get that.
(I assume I can get MOSAIC from NCSA in Illinois.
Any advice appreciated.  Mark Charles

response 10 of 110:

Jan 6 22:03 UTC 1994

charlesm, you need to pick a platform! In reading MTS conferences, it
is evident that it is much more difficult to get PPP up on a PC, than
MacPPP on a Mac. So, if you have 1 and 2, forget Winsock, and launch
Telnet, Fetch, which launches MacPPP and MacTCP does its thing. If
something doesn't work, e-mail me all your configurations in MacTCP,
and your MacTCP DNS IPs, and I might have some ideas.

response 12 of 110:

Jan 17 15:55 UTC 1994

Rane, thanks for the offer.  I think you missed my statement that I have
Fetch, macTCP, and PPP working.  I've since found out that Turbogopher
and macMosaic require Mac system 7, so I'm stuck on the Mac side until
I can get access to a newer mac.
 
On the Intel side, I'm running Merit's PPP stack with their "tweaked"
version of NCSA telnet and ftp for DOS.  The documentation I have
for UMN's DOS Gopher is that it needs the Clarkson packet drivers, which Iuse
SLIP.  Also, NCSA's WinMosaic documentation comes with a shareware version of
Winsock (from trumpet) that also requires SLIP.

I guess my next step is to ask someone at Merit if they are planning to
provide special versions of gopher, Mosaic, or Winsock that will work
with their DOS PPP stack.  Can anyone suggest who I should talk to
at Merit?

(one reason i got my Merit authorization account was to use gopher
and Mosaic.  At that time I didn't know about SLIP/PPP conflicts.)

response 14 of 110:

Jan 18 21:29 UTC 1994

re #12:
What did you do to configure Merit's PPP to work?  It keeps crashing my system.

response 16 of 110:

Jan 22 14:39 UTC 1994

I'm still trying to get PPP for DOS (I don't have Windows) to work.  My
computer tends to crash after it's been running for about five minutes.

response 18 of 110:

Feb 28 21:20 UTC 1994

First off:  No flames!  This is my first post on the grex machine bbs, so...

1)  MAC PPP
You shouldn't need any special version of MacTCP, or MacPPP, for the
drivers to work properly together.  It is recommended that you use the
latest version of each, though.  I don't know what version that are on
with MacTCP.  Using MacPPP, you should be using v2.? or later.  I guess
that they (michnet) had some problems with the authentication for the
previuos versions.  It worked most of the time, but someone found a
loophole or something.

If you already have fetch working, then everything else whould be working
as well.  The only things that I have come accross as problems when
setting up MacPPP on people's computers is when trying to do something
that requires authorization at the other end.  

I don't know how, but I have run across some servers (mostly news and irc)
that won't let you connect to them with your local client because you
don't belong to a certain select group?  I am not sure how to get around
this, but t is the most common problem that I have found using MacPPP.

2) DOS PPP (!@#$%^&*)
The University of Michigan DOES NOT support DOS machines.  That is what I
have found out in the years that I have dealt with them.  There are a
certain few DOS gurus at the UofM that can answer even the toughest
questions about DOS machines, but the majority of the UofM community like
to use the (yech!) mouse.

At first, when I set up the PPP driver for the DOS machine, I was using
the tweaked version that Merit (or had they changed to Michnet by then?  I
forget.) provided.  It was good for what I needed to do then (telnet from
site to site) but as I got more into the other aspects of the Internet, I
found that it became very limited, and has too many bugs to be useful.  So
I put is on the shelf for the better part of a year.  When I looked into
it again just recently though, I found that someone had made the driver
into something that is easitly used. 

Now I am using it to do basically everything that I do on the internet.
->Gopher
->Mosaic
->telnet
->Readnews
->POPmail (discussed later)
->et al

The version of the driver that I am using is v1.97.  This version emulates
an ethernet board exactly (or really close), so that you can use any
program that uses can get your address from the bootp protocol.  If anyone
is interested, I can put the code into our FTP archives here.  (Do we have
FTP archives here?)  I will also put up the tweak that I had to make to
NCSA Telnet to make that work.  Everything else that I have used has been
able to be used right out of the \bin.

3)  My turn to ask a question...
Does GREX have a POPMail server up and running.  I am not to sure about
the specifics of the server, but I know that the old machine where I got
my mail from I used to be able to use my POPMail client to get my mail
from the machine where I forwarded everything for storage.  I like to be
able to read messages at my leisure, then reply to them directly from my
home machine.  But when I tested out my POPMail program, it wouldn't let
me get to the mail that I had on grex.

Any gurus out there know whether users of grex have the ability of using a
POPMail client?

SHould this discussion be continued in the info conference?

Now how do i get out of here.  Trumpet is so much easier...Ah here we go
(xed-fingers)

response 20 of 110:

Mar 1 01:27 UTC 1994

How does a user sitting in his or her own home with a computer and modem
reach out and get to port 109 on Grex's internet connection?

I will have to let a staff guru answer the question about whether
it would actually work. Incoming internet is generally unlimited.

response 22 of 110:

Mar 3 14:47 UTC 1994

We don't have a POP server installed here.  If there is demand for
it, we could see about installing one.

response 24 of 110:

Mar 3 23:06 UTC 1994

Our trusty treasurer, Dan Romanchik (danr).  Type "!support" at the
next prompt and you'll see some text displayed listing full details
on rates and where to send money.