The disk that comes with Internet Starter Kit for Macintosh contains all the software you need to access the Internet! The software is compressed (using Aladdin's excellent StuffIt InstallerMaker) so that it can fit on a single high-density Macintosh disk. To install any or all of these programs, double-click on the ISKM Installer icon. See the following text for a detailed list of what's installed by each option in the ISKM Installer.
Note: If you receive a disk that your Mac rejects, call Hayden/Macmillan Computer Publishing, at 800-858-7674 or 317-581-7674. Do note that the disk is a 1.4 MB disk -- it will not work in 800K drives used in very old Macs (the Plus, some SEs, and the Mac II).
The ISKM disk includes:
Note: I recommend that you make a backup copy of the ISKM Installer in case anything should go wrong with your master copy. To do this, simply copy the ISKM Installer file from the ISKM disk to your hard disk. You can then copy it to another floppy disk if you want.
But wait! Lest I sound too much like a late-night Ginsu knife commercial (has anyone ever bought one of those to cut beer cans?), I have in fact done even more.
As I noted previously, I have bookmarks to the major Internet programs so you can download any one of them with merely a double-click of the mouse. But what if you want one of the less-popular programs, or simply want to check out what else is available? Have I got an FTP site for you�
I seem to have collected about 50 MB of software in the course of my testing, so including even twenty-five disks would barely have been enough, and they would have made the book kind of bulky. So, I had a talk with the folks at Northwest Nexus, and they agreed to set up an FTP site for me that everyone on the Internet could access. This way, you will have a single site to visit for all of your Macintosh Internet applications and utilities.
The FTP site is called ftp.tidbits.com, and you can use any standard method of accessing an anonymous FTP site. Just use anonymous as your username and your email address as your password. If the machine rejects your full email address as a password, try using just your username and an @ sign, as in ace@; sometimes this particular FTP server is a bit finicky.
Here's a quick tutorial on connecting to the FTP site after you have installed and configured MacTCP (and MacPPP or InterSLIP, if necessary) and Anarchie, by using Internet Config. Connect to the Internet. Launch Anarchie. If your Bookmarks window doesn't appear automatically, from the File menu choose List Bookmarks. Scroll down in the list until you see TidBITS, and then double-click on that bookmark and then go into the "tisk" folder (it's a hold-over from the first edition, which I referred to in shorthand as TISK, for The Internet Starter Kit). Alternately, use the shortcuts I've set up for you with the bookmarks for ISKM HTML Programs, ISKM Internet Utility Programs, and ISKM MacTCP-based Programs that are higher up in the Bookmarks window.
When you double-click on one of these bookmarks, Anarchie connects to ftp.tidbits.com, switches into the proper directory, and lists the files. From there you can navigate around in the different folders by double-clicking on them. Double-clicking on a file retrieves it. It's that easy.
The bookmarks and the FTP site are all fine and nice, but the more alert among my reading audience are no doubt asking themselves, "But how am I going to figure out that there's a new version of MacWeb, or Eudora, or whatever? And heck, how am I going to find anything I want on the Internet anyway?" Good question, alert readers, and the simple answer is that you'll use MacWeb or another Web browser to connect to the ISKM Home Page at:
http://www.mcp.com/hayden/iskm/
Note: I've set the copy of MacWeb on the ISKM disk to connect to this page by default. However, if you've set a different home page in MacWeb previously, or wish to use Netscape or another Web browser, you can still use the URL for the ISKM Home Page as your default home page. All the programs have various ways, usually located in the Preferences, of setting a default home page.
The ISKM Home Page has a number of links to the most important sites on the Internet, catalogs of resources like Yahoo, search engines like WebCrawler, important FTP sites like Info-Mac and UMich, and even a few of the major companies in the Macintosh industry, such as Apple and Microsoft. These links should be your starting point for any exploration of the Internet, and rest assured that if I find additional sites that I consider equally as useful, I'll add them.
In addition, at the top of the ISKM Home Page is a link, called "ISKM Macintosh Internet Software Updates," to another Web page that continually tracks the latest versions of all the main Internet applications for the Macintosh (so stop in every now and then and see what's changed). You can use your Anarchie bookmarks to retrieve any of these programs, or you can use a Web browser (although Anarchie is better at retrieving files).
Again, these pages are a public Internet resource and anyone, whether or not they've bought the book, is welcome to use them. If you find them useful, I'm glad, and I hope they might inspire you to think what you could contribute to the net someday.
I designed the ISKM Installer to be as easy as possible to use. I tried to think of the different things you might want to do with the various files on the disk, which is why I created several different installer options.
Note: The ISKM Installer will not overwrite any existing files -- if you want to replace a file such as MacTCP, you must move it out of the System Folder manually first, along with MacTCP DNR and MacTCP Prep. This is imperative if you have installed Apple's System 7.5 (which comes with MacTCP), if you are switching from SLIP to PPP, or if you have already used some of this software previously and wish to take advantage of the disk's included preferences and configurations.
As with most installers, using the ISKM Installer is a piece of cake. First, restart your Macintosh while holding down the Shift key. This process disables all of your extensions until you restart. Although not absolutely necessary, it's a good idea to do this to ensure that anti-virus software or other extensions don't interfere with the installation process (which they sometimes do).
Insert the ISKM floppy disk in your drive, and when the window comes up, double-click on the file called ISKM Installer. You should see the ISKM Installer splash screen. Click on the Continue button. Next, the ISKM Installer presents you with a screen full of text that describes what the various options available in the ISKM Installer do, and offers other useful information. Read this information, and if you want, save or print it by clicking the Save or Print buttons. Then click the Continue button. The ISKM Installer then presents you with the Standard Install dialog box (see figure 16.1).
Figure 16.1: ISKM Installer Standard Install dialog.
Here's where you must make your first decision.
The most likely option is Full MacPPP Install, and if that's what you want to do, click the Install button. The ISKM Installer informs you that you must restart your computer after installing and asks if you would like to continue.
If you have any unsaved work open in other applications, click the No button and then the Quit button back in the Standard Install dialog. Save your work, quit the other applications, and repeat the steps to this point. When you are ready to install, click the Yes button when the ISKM Installer asks about restarting. Next, you're presented with a Standard File dialog that enables you to locate the ISKM3 Folder anywhere on your hard disk that you like.
Once you choose a location and click the Save button, the ISKM Installer proceeds to install everything, and when it's done, it informs you that everything has been installed correctly and forces you to click on a Restart button. Click it, and after your computer restarts, you're ready to configure the software that was installed for you.
There are two possibilities at this point. First, if you're not working with one of the Internet Starter Kit Providers listed in appendix A, contact your provider for the information you need to configure MacTCP. Read chapters 17, "MacTCP" and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet," for instructions on how to actually perform the configuration (and follow it up with either chapter 18, "PPP," or chapter 19, "SLIP," depending on which you use). If you run into trouble, first read chapter 20, "Troubleshooting Your Connection," and then turn to your provider for help.
Second, if you are working with one of the Internet Starter Kit Providers listed in appendix A, configuring MacTCP is trivial. In your ISKM3 Folder, find the folder called Customized MacTCP Prep Files. In it are a number of folders, each named for one of the Internet Starter Kit Providers. Within each of these folders is a MacTCP Prep file.
Next, open your System folder and see if you have a MacTCP DNR file. If you do, throw it out. MacTCP creates a new one when you restart anyway, and you don't want any old configurations hanging around.
Still inside your System folder, open your Preferences folder. Make sure you are in View by Name mode in the Finder (choose by Name from the View menu), and scroll down to see if you have a MacTCP Prep file already. If you do, drag that file out of the Preferences folder and put it on your desktop. You can throw it away later, or, if you've used MacTCP before and know you want to save its settings, hold on to it for future use.
After you've removed any existing MacTCP Prep files, hold down the Option key and drag the MacTCP Prep file from the appropriate Internet Starter Kit Provider's folder over to your Preferences folder. By holding down the Option key, you ensure that you make a copy of the file, rather than moving the original. That original might be handy later on if you change things and need to quickly reconfigure MacTCP to your original settings.
Now that you've moved the appropriate MacTCP Prep file over to your Preferences folder, choose Restart from the Special menu to restart your Macintosh. When it restarts, open MacTCP and click the More button to confirm that it has picked up the settings for your provider from the MacTCP Prep file that you installed. If it hasn't, Option-drag another copy into your Preferences folder, replacing the previous MacTCP Prep file, and restart again, perhaps turning off any unnecessary extensions that might be interfering.
Now you must configure MacPPP. The ISKM Installer tries to configure MacPPP for you, but there are some pieces of information that only you know. Open the Config PPP control panel that the ISKM Installer has installed for you in the Control Panels folder (see figure 16.2).
Figure 16.2: Config PPP control panel.
Note: If your provider uses only SLIP, unlike the Internet Starter Kit Providers listed in appendix A, refer to chapter 19, "SLIP" and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet" for instructions on configuring InterSLIP in conjunction with the information that your Internet provider gives you. The hardest part of InterSLIP is making sure you have a properly written gateway script -- I've included several as examples in case you need to write your own.
If you have your modem connected to your Printer port for some reason, select that port in the Port Name pop-up menu. If you use an Apple Express Modem or a Global Village PowerPort Mercury with either the PowerBook Duo or the PowerBook 500-series, choose Internal Modem from the pop-up menu. For most other internal PowerBook modems, the Modem choice is still correct. Then, from the PPP Server pop-up menu, select the modem configuration that most closely matches yours -- if none look right, select SupraFAXModem v.32bis, which uses a generic initialization string and should work with any Hayes-compatible modem.
Note: Other users contributed these modem configurations -- I can't guarantee that they work because I don't have most of these modems to test on. You may have to use your modem manual or call your modem vendor to decide on a different modem init string. Also, I've only entered the most likely strings in Config PPP -- there are even more in a file called Modem Strings in the MacPPP 2.0.1 folder.
Click the Config button to bring up the Server Configuration dialog (see figure 16.3).
Figure 16.3: MacPPP Server Configuration dialog.
First, enter your phone number. If you're calling long distance, you probably must enter the digit 1 before the number. If you're dialing out through a large phone system in a company or in a hotel room, you may have to prefix the number with 8, or 9,. In both cases, the comma tells the modem to pause for two seconds before dialing.
If you don't think the modem init string that's installed for you will work with your modem, enter the appropriate one in the Modem Init field. Check your modem manual -- don't guess! Make sure your modem init string turns hardware handshaking on and XON/XOFF off.
If you're using a 28.8 Kbps modem and there wasn't a configuration for you in Config PPP's pop-up menu, choose 38400 from the Port Speed pop-up menu. If you're using a 14.4 Kbps modem, choose 19200. In both cases, if everything works right, you can increase that speed to 57600. Never select either 28800 or 14400 -- some modems simply don't work with those settings.
Time for another decision. If your provider uses PAP, or Password Authentication Protocol, click the Authentication dialog and enter your userid and password (given to you by your provider) in the dialog. Then click the Connect Script button and erase all the fields and turn off the If your provider does not support PAP, you must edit the Connect Script. Click the Connect Script button (see figure 16.4). Figure 16.4: MacPPP Connect Script dialog. The template script that I've entered here may or may not be correct. It's the most common, and it is likely to work for most providers. However, your provider may require you to send the string PPP after you login, or something like that. Check your provider's instructions to see if the connect script differs from the template. In all likelihood it won't, and if it does, it won't differ significantly. Enter your userid and your password in the fields marked for them, replacing all of the template text. Make sure to enter your userid and your password in exactly the same case as they were given to you. For the purposes of a userid or password "Adam" and "adam" are completely different. Click the OK button to save your changes, and back in the Server Configuration dialog, click the Done button. You should now be able to click the Open button in the Config PPP control panel to establish your connection to your PPP account. If you have troubles, first review the section in chapters 17 and 18 about setting up MacTCP and MacPPP and also read through chapter 20, "Troubleshooting Your Connection." To configure Eudora for use with your account, you must enter your POP account and real name (and possibly an SMTP server) in Eudora's Getting Started section in the Settings dialog box. See chapter 21, "Email" and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet" for detailed instructions. Your provider should have given you all of the information to enter into Eudora. To properly use any of the newsreaders, you must know a few pieces of information. Most important is the name of your NNTP server, also called a news server, and the name of your SMTP, or mail, server. Some providers may require a userid and password, which are usually the same as the userid and password you use in Eudora. Again, your Internet provider gives you this information. If you use either NewsWatcher or NewsHopper, use Internet Config (see chapter 27, "Utilities & Miscellany") to enter this information. Otherwise, simply refer to chapter 22, "Usenet News," and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet." To use Anarchie, you must first enter your email address (which Anarchie uses as a password for anonymous FTP sites) in Internet Config. See chapters 27, "Utilities & Miscellany," and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet" for instructions on how to configure Internet Config, and see chapters 23, "FTP," and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet" for additional information about Anarchie. MacWeb (see chapter 25, "World Wide Web") requires no configuration at all, and as you've probably noticed by now, it's a good idea to run through all the settings in Internet Config quickly for use with Anarchie, NewsWatcher, and NewsHopper. See chapters 27, "Utilities & Miscellany," and chapter 29, "Step-by-Step Internet" for instructions on how to configure Internet Config. That's all there is to it -- enjoy your Internet connection! Installers are good at putting files in specific places, but they seldom tell you exactly where the various files have ended up. The following information explains where everything ends up on your hard disk, organized by installation option. This section details precisely what files each installation option installs and where those files are installed on your disk. Now that you've installed the software from the ISKM disk, the time has come to learn how it works, assuming you haven't already jumped ahead and read about MacTCP and MacPPP in the following chapters already. 
Configuring Eudora and Email
Configuring Usenet News
Configuring Anarchie and FTP
Configuring Other MacTCP-based Applications
Note: Once you install all the software, configure MacPPP or InterSLIP, and make the connection to your PPP or SLIP account, that's when you run the great programs discussed in chapters 21 through 28. MacPPP and InterSLIP do nothing more than establish the connection.
Installation Details
Installation Option Details
Full MacPPP Install
Full InterSLIP Install
MacTCP Only
MacPPP Only
InterSLIP Only
Anarchie Only
Eudora Only
Internet Config Only
MacWeb Only
StuffIt Expander Only
Bookmarks for New Internet Programs Only
Customized MacTCP Prep Files Only
Moving on to MacTCP