Notes on Nettamer
-----------------

Nettamer is for PPP only.  It is an all-in-one program that needs no TSR's
or packet drivers.  A 1200-or-faster Hayes-compatible modem is required.
Nettamer provides ftp, telnet, mail, news, WWW, ping, and finger (WWW and
telnet have some problems), and there is online help.  Nettamer is nagware
to some degree (registration is $35).  Documentation is included - read it
before running the program (it comes with a setup program, READER.EXE, that
you need to run first).  n1092-xt.zip is the version for 8086's and 286's;
there are versions for 386+ systems and for palmtops available (see
NETTAMER.DOC).

Select "Change Comm Settings" ("Communications, Modem, And Terminal
Settings") in Reader to setup your modem (with v1.08 or later, you don't
have to select it - it's the first screen you see).  Select the Comm Port
you have the modem on; if it's a standard port, you won't need to set Port
IRQ.  Dialing String Start is correct if you have touch-tone phone service;
otherwise set it to "ATDP".  You don't need to change Print To Bios Screen
unless you have an old CGA card or you're blind and using a screen reader
(Tandy CGA will work anyway).  For Baud Rate, set this to 4 times the modem
speed if you have data compression on the modem, the modem speed otherwise. 
It is good to set the rate as high as possible, but it may not work at the
recommended speed if you have a really fast modem and a really slow
computer.  For me, my 14.4k modem with data compression will work at 38400
but not at 57600 (that's because of the slow UART on it).  If in doubt,
19200 is a safe speed, but Baud Rate must be at least as high as the modem's
connect speed (you may have to change the init string on a 28.8k modem to
slow it down if you can't go that fast).  Set the Modem Init String so that
DCD follows the presence of data carrier (usually &C1).  Enable hardware
flow control (&D2).  On newer modems, "AT&F0^M" should work for the init
string.  The default Modem Init String ("ATZ^M") will work fine with older
modems like mine if you have the right settings in NVRAM.

Select "Edit Current User Defaults" to set up for your Internet provider
(again, with the latest Nettamer, you will go to the screen automatically
the first time).

Nettamer is still under development and appears to be improving in
successive versions, but it still has problems.  The WWW display leaves a
bit to be desired, for example.  Nevertheless, Nettamer is the easiest way
to get directly on the Internet with an old PC.  (For a more functional,
albeit harder to configure, alternative, you can set up a packet driver such
as Dospppd and select applications to run under it.)

Nettamer is designed for offline news and mail reading and composition,
which is a very nice feature.

To select newsgroups, press F3 WORK from the terminal screen, and select
"Select Usenet Groups for Download".  From that menu, select "Add A New
Group" to type in a newsgroup name, or "Update Group List" to download a
menu of groups from the server.  Once you download the group list, which
takes a long time, a menu is displayed when you "Add A New Group".  NOTE:
there are a LOT of groups (over 30,000), and the menu is gargantuan, nearly
unusable, probably, on most news servers (it is not hierarchical).  The
newsgroup you select will be added to the menu.  To actually retrieve
messages in the newsgroup, you need to select the newsgroup name, then type
in a range of message numbers to retrieve.  Once you have selected the
appropriate newsgroups and requested messages in them, you go back to the
terminal screen and press F6 DIAL, then select one of the options that
includes "Get Usenet Groups" (you also "Get Usenet Groups" to get the group
list if you selected that).  You will see the news articles scroll past as
they come in.  When they are done, select "Read/Reply/Write Messages" from
the F3 WORK menu to read the news.

Nettamer is designed to work mostly in "batch mode" so that you spend as
little time online as possible.  Read the docs for more details.