Welcome to Eternal February – How to use post-Google Usenet in 2024 on vintage Macs
Published: Saturday, 20th April 2024
One of the joys of retrocomputing is in using your long-obsolete machines for genuinely productive work and pleasure.
The World Wide Web steam-rollered its way to dominance around the turn of the millennium and the march of time has since firmly moved the modern web beyond the reach of vintage Macs. But if we look back to the 90s when we first took our computers online, there’s plenty of ripe opportunity for adventures in cyberspace with our antique machines in the 2020s.
IRC, Gopher, and Hotline are all still available and easily accessible using period software. But there’s another early online service that towers above them; the OG social network, Usenet.
Usenet, the grandaddy of all social media
Launched in 1980, Usenet grew through the 80s and early 90s and transitioned from being the domain of academics to pretty much the primary online mass communications medium. Organised into hierarchies of broad topical interest (computers, science, recreation, etc.) and then further organised into specific focused topics, otherwise known as “newsgroups”.
These newsgroups can be thought of as bulletin boards, or message boards, or even chat rooms; a user visits a newsgroup to read and post messages in threaded discussions. Most newsgroups are unmoderated but there are some moderated groups, which help to avoid the tendency of Usenet users to devolve into bitter flame wars over the smallest disagreement…
Usenet use exploded in September 1993 when AOL began to provide access as part of their subscription service, leading to a huge influx of new users that never seemed to end. The upheaval this caused prompted the birth of the derisive phrase “Eternal September” (a reference to the annual influx of new university students gaining access to Usenet for the first time as they moved into student accommodation) as old-school users railed against the flood of “clueless newbies” wrecking up their Usenet.
Things stayed this way for a long time as Usenet became more and more popular through the 90s and into the early 2000s before finally being largely usurped by web forums and then early social media. Many people have lamented the death of Usenet over the intervening years but it has stubbornly persisted.
Piracy has been the main activity sustaining Usenet, with vast amounts of films, music, and software illegally uploaded and downloaded every day. There remains, though, a hardcore of users who still use Usenet for its original purpose; discussion in plaintext.
Usenet in the third decade of the 21st Century
Newsgroups across Usenet continue to receive often lively and voluminous discussion on a dizzying range of subjects, not least to mention one on our very own niche interest; comp.sys.mac.vintage.
A recent seismic change in Usenet, though, has been the withdrawal of Google’s Usenet web interface. Long considered a spiritual successor of the hated AOL, Google’s service had for many years been plagued by abuse, with trolls and spammers using it to flood groups with anonymous dross. In recent years, the problem seemed to grow out of all proportion with some groups hammered with hundreds and hundreds of useless posts each day. Google announced late last year that they were finally throwing in the towel and abandoning Usenet;
Starting on February 22, 2024, you can no longer use Google Groups (at groups.google.com) to post content to Usenet groups, subscribe to Usenet groups, or view new Usenet content.
So, just as AOL’s arrival began an Eternal September, maybe Google’s departure has introduced a more positive Eternal February? Certainly, there feels like no better time to dive back into the grandaddy of them all and see if our vintage Macs can become our gateway to fruitful and enjoyable discussion in the newsgroups.
The perfect medium for retro-computing communications
Usenet has not changed technologically in decades. This is perfect for retro-computing as it means that software published in the 90s and is compatible with our hobby machines will work perfectly for accessing newsgroups, all we need is an account with a news provider and there are plenty of options available.
First of all, the amusingly named Eternal September provides a free service to text-only newsgroups (so, no piracy possible as the so-called “binaries” newsgroups aren’t carried and such files are not able to be posted to any group on ES). Individual.net provides a great service for a small annual fee. There are also plenty of providers who offer cheap monthly subscriptions for blocks of data use which, while targeted at people looking to download warez by the terrabyte, will provide essentially unlimited use to a text-group user.
Once you have an account with a news provider, you’ll need newsreader software to access Usenet. The Mac saw a healthy range of options back in the day, most of which will be in the vintageapplemac.com software archive so have a search through that, with variations of NewsWatcher being the most popular.
I personally am using YA-NewsWatcher at the moment, but there’s also MT-NewsWatcher and the closely-related Thoth (created by Brian Clark, one of the main guys behind NewsWatcher). I was using Thoth but it is basically NewsWatcher on steroids and is quite fiddly, and was proving a little unstable on my PowerMac G4 running OS9 (I subsequently wiped that drive and reinstalled OS9 as the whole thing was a wreck tbh, years upon years of use and multiple clashing extensions…).
Hell, you can even use Outlook Express to access Usenet! Whatever you end up choosing, once you have your provider account configured you will be able to download the list of groups, which will commonly consist of 20,000 or more newsgroups. Most of these will be moribund and long-since abandoned, but have a sift through for whatever your main interests are and you might well find a group that has seen some recent activity. If so, dive in and post a message!
Even if a group looks dead, it’s often the case that if you make a post then somebody will respond relatively quickly. Usenet users can subscribe to groups, and many users will often have large subs lists and any new activity in these will be alerted to them the next time they open their newsreader.
A Usenet newsgroup for Macintosh enthusiasts
Obviously, comp.sys.mac.vintage (CSMV from now on) is our go-to group, and there is regular posting activity there. The whole comp.sys.mac.* hierarchy is generally unused these days but there are a few groups within it that do see a lot of use; mostly flames and open warfare but there is some good discussion to find.
CSMV was created in April 2013 following a proposal made by David Finnegan of macgui.com, with the following rationale:
Being that discussion within the Macintosh Big-8 newsgroups has naturally
followed the evolution of the computer hardware and software, and being that
a certain number of users and hobbyists still appreciate using and maintaining
the older systems, the creation of a newsgroup dedicated to older Macintosh
hardware and software is hereby proposed.Presently, discussions for older Macintosh systems are carried out in the
most relevant newsgroup. There are two principal drawbacks to this current
arrangement. First of all, the volume of discussions for present-day systems
dwarfs that of the older systems and software. Secondly, it follows that the
larger discussion base naturally stems from a larger pool of participants whose
technical knowledge primarily centers around the modern Mac OS X systems.With a newsgroup dedicated to all matters concerning older Macintosh systems,
both experienced users and hobbyists alike will be able to participate in
discussions without the clutter of other discussions on the newest hardware
and software.Outside of Usenet, a small number of moderated message boards and mailing lists
are devoted to vintage and obsolete Macintosh discussions. An unmoderated
newsgroup that will almost certainly be archived for perpetuity will serve the
needs of vintage Macintosh users for years to come by allowing free exchange
of discussion, advice, tips, and questions. Message archives will ensure that
in future, users will be able to draw from this base of answers and insight,
much like what is now possible with Macintosh newsgroup archives from the late
80s and 90s.
The group’s charter was proposed as follows:
The newsgroup comp.sys.mac.vintage is intended for discussions regarding the
use, maintenance, and programming of Macintosh computers which are no longer
current. This classification includes the following systems:
- All Motorola 680×0 series computers
- All PowerPC series computers
- Any Intel computer declared by Apple as either vintage or obsolete
- Mac OS Systems 1.0 through 9.2.2
- Any Mac OS X version no longer supported by Apple
Discussions of Macintosh clones, as well as alternative operating systems, are
also on-topic and welcomed in this newsgroup.
This proposal garnered enough positive response that the Big 8 Management Board agreed to create the group and issue the necessary control messages to allow news providers to carry it. In the decade since its birth, CSMV has seen some interesting discussion, albeit at a modest level. Join in today and kick off a new thread! There’s no better way to put your vintage Mac to work than discussing vintage Macs on a vintage discussion medium. 🙂
A word of warning to those who have never experienced Usenet; Usenet in general is a lawless place with high levels of anonymity. Consequently, when discussions get heated, they often get vicious. If somebody tries to start an argument with you, it is always best to make use of the killfile functionality of your newsreader and put them into the bit bucket; do not feed the trolls!
That warning aside, Usenet in a post-Google world has the potential to provide an excellent experience, especially so for for retro-computing enthusiasts. Give it a try and see what you make of it!
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