Stargate did not use anything called "bags".  I just checked the source code to confirm. It also didn't use D news.  Stargate required B news. Remember - Stargate was in the 1987 time frame.  Googling for Dnews turns up a CNet page saying it was released in 2004.     Mary Ann On 05/09/2018 10:03 PM, Bakul Shah wrote: > On Wed, 09 May 2018 22:53:01 -0600 Grant Taylor via TUHS wrote: >> On 05/09/2018 09:51 PM, Lyndon Nerenberg wrote: >>> What are they to begin with? Having run some "major" UUCP hubs in the >>> day, I have no clue what a UUCP "bag" is ... >> I see them in the context of Usenet via UUCP, so rnews. >> >> The best that I can tell is that they are simply the messages that need >> to be sent written into a single file that is then transferred via some >> mechanism, ftp being a common one. >> >> It looks like it might be the output of nntpsend or send-nntp. Or >> perhaps output of downstream / related UUCP commands. >> >> I often see it mentioned in close proximity of DNews. > From dnews manual > > Sucking in UUCP or Satellite articles > > DNEWS can read UUCP bag files in standard rnews format, > these are often used by satellite systems, the satellite > receiver software may write 'uucp' files to a directory on > your system, dnews can then automatically scan and read in > items that appear in this directory. To read these files > just specify in dnews.conf the directory and file names that > DNews should scan, e.g. in dnews.conf > > I have a vague memory of some folks (Mark Horton?) sending usenet > data in the unused portion satellite TV signal (stargate?). > > Ah, this must be it!: > > https://web.archive.org/web/19981203103811/http://www.stargate.com/history.html