What is it I'm doing wrong?

I just bought a Mac Pro after years of using a PC, so now I'm on a quest to find programs.

I am not very familiar with Newsgroups, but I've used torrents plenty of times in the past for PC programs.

The problem is, torrents is no longer an option because for whatever reason, I am unable to download them now. I think it has something to do with my ISP because no matter what I do, I can't get a connection.

So now I'm trying Newsgroups. I signed up for Giganews and I've used several of the sites listed here to download certain programs.

But I have no idea how to turn them into working programs once they are downloaded. And I've done everything that I'm supposed to do.

I downloaded a program that came in a bunch of DMG files and I read that you can open them using the disk utility in Mac, but that didn't work.

I've also used SuperNZB to open NZB files, but that didn't work. It just seems that there are so many steps and things I need to download that I end up missing a step because I have made no progress.

When I did torrents, it was so easy. You get the programs, you use the crack, and off you go.

But I'm still on square one with Newsgroups.

I'm not familiar with Macs.

Using newsgroups should be very easy.
You download an NZB. The NZB opens with whatever client you have (I have no idea what's out there for Mac). The download comes in the form of an RAR set. To check and Fix errors there is a program called quickpar (MacPARdeluxe would be the mac equivalent). If all checks out, the RAR set gets extracted to the movie, game, ect... using WinRAR (or the Mac equivalent).

It's really a lot like torrents.
Load a file into a client, that starts a download.


From what I understand UNISON is the best Mac Usenet client.
But apparently it's still very weak compaired to the worst on Windows.

See, Mac's frigging suck!!!

There are 4 programs you'll want to have to aid in downloading from newsgroups on a mac.

Unison is by far the best usenet client so if you're not already using it grab it now.

MacPAR deLuxe to handle post-processing including par verification and extraction of rars, zips, and split files (with the help of the following program).

Split&Concat to join split/segmented files (i.e. file.dmg.001, file.dmg.002 - probably like the 'bunch of dmgs' you referred to).

UnRARX for manually unrarring. You probably won't need to use this unless the download didn't include .par2.

Basically when your download completes simply open the .par2 with MacPAR deLuxe and it will perform all the post-processing required. For mac stuff you'll usually end up with a .dmg which DiskUtility will mount for you (it will also mount .iso, .cdr and many other disk image formats).

Hope this helps.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbandit

There are 4 programs you'll want to have to aid in downloading from newsgroups on a mac.

Unison is by far the best usenet client so if you're not already using it grab it now.

MacPAR deLuxe to handle post-processing including par verification and extraction of rars, zips, and split files (with the help of the following program).

Split&Concat to join split/segmented files (i.e. file.dmg.001, file.dmg.002 - probably like the 'bunch of dmgs' you referred to).

UnRARX for manually unrarring. You probably won't need to use this unless the download didn't include .par2.

Basically when your download completes simply open the .par2 with MacPAR deLuxe and it will perform all the post-processing required. For mac stuff you'll usually end up with a .dmg which DiskUtility will mount for you (it will also mount .iso, .cdr and many other disk image formats).

Hope this helps.

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Thanks for the response. Now I realize that I am missing some steps. HOwever, I've been using Unison and I can't seem to figure out how to download actual programs.

When I click on "files", they only offer "music, video pictures, games". The rest is discussions.

Is there a certain trick to this?

They're presets aren't going to show mac apps as they don't want you pirating their software so you just have to know what groups to look in. Your best bet is to input "mac" in the search bar on the Groups window and sort the result by message count and then browse through the top 5-6 mac groups. You may need to click Get More a couple times to go back further in time.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbandit

They're presets aren't going to show mac apps as they don't want you pirating their software so you just have to know what groups to look in. Your best bet is to input "mac" in the search bar on the Groups window and sort the result by message count and then browse through the top 5-6 mac groups. You may need to click Get More a couple times to go back further in time.

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Now I'm beginning to get it. Thanks for being patient. I like this forum.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbandit

They're presets aren't going to show mac apps as they don't want you pirating their software so you just have to know what groups to look in. Your best bet is to input "mac" in the search bar on the Groups window and sort the result by message count and then browse through the top 5-6 mac groups. You may need to click Get More a couple times to go back further in time.

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One question. What does it mean when there is a red dot by a file?

It generally means the file is incomplete, either because it wasn't posted properly or (more likely) because you haven't fetched enough headers.

OK, I'm stuck again. I downloaded a bunch of PAR files, in which I ran through MacParDeluxe. Then it ended up going automatically into Split and Concat where I ended up with a bunch of DMG files.

But every time I try opening them with Disk Utility, I get nowhere. When I right-click on a single file, or even on all the files, Disk Utility opens telling me to "Select a disk, volume, or image."

On the left side, my hard drives are shown, allowing me to select them, but there is no DMG files anywhere to be seen.

I wonder if the problem is that I am running Leopard. The Split and Contat program said I might issues with Leopard.

I keep getting an error 6960.

Running split and concat should give you one .dmg file without an additional .00n extension as it concats all the parts into one file. This is the file you want to open with disk utility (i.e. ignore the .dmg.001, .dmg.002 etc files, they wont open).

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbandit

Running split and concat should give you one .dmg file without an additional .00n extension as it concats all the parts into one file. This is the file you want to open with disk utility (i.e. ignore the .dmg.001, .dmg.002 etc files, they wont open).

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Whoever said Macs are easier than PCs never tried acquiring programs through file sharing.

It took me a while but I managed to acquire Adobe CS3 Design Premium and Final Cut Express 4.

What I didn't realize until I installed it is that the CS3 is in Dutch and for whatever reason, didn't come with Premiere.

The language thing is annoying because the Dutch words hardly have any similarities to English. And there is no way I can change. That is the version.

I also had to download Crossover to help me convert Windows based files.

This really was a battle but I'm sure it will get easier.

Thanks for your help. I wouldn't have been able to do it otherwise.


But I'm not complaining.

Lol, glad you got it working. If it helps, it would have taken the same steps on a PC. Dutch is annoying (at least if you're not dutch), you should download the english version:

Disc 1 | Disc 2 | Disc 3 | Disc 4

Quote:

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Originally Posted by gbandit

Lol, glad you got it working. If it helps, it would have taken the same steps on a PC. Dutch is annoying (at least if you're not dutch), you should download the english version:

Disc 1 | Disc 2 | Disc 3 | Disc 4

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Thanks for the links. I'm still converting the NZB files and it's taking forever. I know it's a huge file, so I'll just be patient.

Thanks again.