alt.lasers?

[Laser Ben]

What is this alt.lasers I have been hearing about. I would like to ask for help on my new project, a 50W side pumped DPSS green.

[carmangary]

It's a USENET group. Doesn't have a lot of action. Some of the same people you see at the other laser forums...

[The_Doctor]

Plus a large number of serious experts who ghost it a lot and might answer if asked. The more well-thought the question, the better the chance of hooking a good answer. It looks slow there at times, but the laser industry has been using that far longer than any forum, and it still does. Just watch it for a while to see how it works, same as with any newsgroup. Most ISP's carry that one I think. Best accessed via a newsreader like Xnews. Google Groups works, but not as well as it should, and definitely not as well as Xnews and such.

[Laser Ben]

How do I add it to Xnews?

[The_Doctor]

Right click the main window area after loading Xnews, select "Add group manually" (or press 'Insert' key) then enter the name alt.lasers to the list. You don't have to fetch a list of all groups carried, you'll know when you double click the new entry, whether or not your provider can get you its message headers. If it can, get them all, there aren't that many even if you have access to a year's retention, and it allows you to search for past stuff by subject (or substring of subject), which can be extremely fast and useful.

[Laser Ben]

It keeps saying "10061 Connection Refused"

[The_Doctor]

That means it's not getting connected to your news feed provider. That error is a general TCP/IP error that means you connected to a closed (not stealthed) port on a remote machine.

Check the address for the provider's news system, is usually in the form news.provider.com, if in doubt, go to the help pages for the service. In an emergency, Google Groups will get you to read and post stuff, but it sucks as a permanent interface.

[Banthai]

Another way to view Alt.lasers is to use google groups ( that how i view it )

link here
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.lasers/topics

hope that helps


all the best ... Karl

[Laser Ben]

I like the Google groups one!

[The_Doctor]

I already mentioned Google Groups twice in this thread. I won't add anything else, I don't think any of it was going anywhere, was it?