How to download e-books from mIRC
Before we got torrents, P2P and even before Napster, mIRC was the best place where you could get lots of movies, apps and mp3′s for free. It’s not an easy thing to use for downloading but once you get the hang of it, you’ll learn of its benefits.
I’m an avid user of mIRC back in college and I still have it installed in my machine for the occasional hard-to-find mp3′s and for e-books. It’s very difficult to find the e-book that you want from LimeWire or torrents so I’ll teach you how you could easily get them from mIRC.
The instructions here are a bit detailed so forgive me if you’re looking for a short guide.
You have to get the latest version of mIRC and install it in your machine. You don’t have to register it if you don’t want to.
Joining a channel
Before you can go to a channel and start your downloads, create some login details first.
It’s time to connect to a server. Here are a couple of places in mIRC where you can get e-books.
Server: Undernet
Channel: #Bookz
Server: IRCHighway
Channel: #ebooks
Since I’m having trouble joining channel #bookz in Undernet (always full), I’ll go to IRCHighway instead.
In the Connect menu, click Servers and look for IRCHighway then click Select. Then click Connect to server.
Wait until you get connected.
Before doing anything else, you need to tweak some settings to allow downloading. Go to Tool > Options > Sounds, then click Requests. Uncheck Send !nick file as private message.
(Optional) Still in the Options, click DCC and select Auto-get file so that you don’t have to babysit your downloads.
When done click OK.
You can start joining a channel. In the command line type /j ebooks (/j bookz if your’re in Undernet) then hit Enter.
Geting your e-Book
Ok in the channel, you can begin searching for an e-book. The search command is @find <keyword>. For example if I want to find James Patterson’s Step on a Crack, I’ll type “@find patterson step crack“.
Then wait for a few seconds for people/bots with positive matches to send you a private message. There will be a lot if what you’re looking for is popular.
Click each private window to check if they got the file that you want. Once you find one, select and copy the command on how to get the file. Highlight the text then press CTRL-C to copy the command.
The get command starts with “!” and ends with the filename.
For example, MysteryTrain has a lot of results and I need a file with a .lit extension so I’m gonna copy the command !MysteryTrain Patterson, James – Step on a Crack (v1.0).lit
Then go back to the main channel (#ebooks) and paste the command there and hit Enter.
Wait for awhile before the download window appears.
The download speed depends on the sharer but e-Book files seldom exceed 1 MB. When done, you can get the file from the download folder.
The default download folder is C:\Program Files\mIRC\download.
That’s it! Enjoy your e-Book. Let me know if you’re having troubles with my instructions by leaving a comment so I can clear things up for you.
You might also be interested in:
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Filed under: Tips n' Trix
This post was the best thing that ever happened to me, reading wise. My Kindle loves you and so do I.
Do you happen to know of any other servers for ebooks? The two you’ve mentioned have done well for me, but I’m greedy and want moooooore. XD.
Also, for the ebook lovers out there, you can also check out http://www.gigapedia.com
Hehehe. that’s the only two i know and it has done me well so far. don’t be greedy.
I’ve followed your instructions exactly (thanks for taking the time to write it out!), but each time I download a book, I get an error message saying Windows can’t open it, and giving me the option to find a program in which to open it. I also tried opening them in Stanza, where I get an “unknown error extracting document” message. I tried three different books, two different formats (pdf and epub). I’m wondering if I need to rename the file (well, I actually tried that and it didn’t work, but the file name comes out as “Author_ Title_ (epub).rar” and that .rar doesn’t seem to be readable by any program…). Any ideas?
RAR is a package file, like ZIP. Download winrar to unpackage it and you’ll get the epub file.
nicely done….thanks for putting this together.
Hi,
Sorry for the silly question. Do you know where I can find help when I can’t get connected and mIRC keeps saying “can’t find proxy address”. I am not network savvy enough to solve that on my own.
By the way, What do you think of exchanging larger zipped files containg multiple books between the two of us? I’m thinking we exchange a list, we both select books and we use dropbox to send it to each other…
I guess I could make calibre produce a list of the complete database.
Glad I found your post here.
Regards, Len.
hmm it has something to do with proxy. maybe your mirc is using one. was that a fresh install of mirc? or maybe your machine requires proxy to connect to the internet. are you in the office? can you try a different machine? look for the proxy settings in mirc and remove it or don’t use proxy settings.
i’m not looking for ebooks but i could share mine but all i have are mostly mystery, espionage, scifi books. james patterson, jeffrey deaver, vince flynn, lee child, james rollins, lincoln child, douglas preston, brad thor, david baldacci, etc.
What sort of books are you interested in reading?
as of the moment i’m all set. i don’t have any problems looking for the books that i want from mirc.
Hi folks,
I’m total newbie with IRC so please be gentle with me.
When I try to connect I get
Proxy: Unable to find proxy address
What do I do wrong? I didn’t change any settings. I do connect to the internet via an open wifi net. Does that have anything to do with it? Should I change my firewall settings? choose another port?
Thanks for your time.
Len.
It was a fresh install.
When I look in options under Proxy I see:
Connection: Server
Protocol: Socks4
Port: 1080
So, my guess is I am not using a proxy at all.
Well, bummer, it’s too complicated for me.
I’ll just leave it for what it is.
Thanks anyway.
Len.
Hi there,
This is great but I can’t find the ebooks channels on either of these servers. Am I doing something wrong or have they moved?
Thanks
i just tried bookz in undernet and the channel’s still there. hmmm.
Yeah sorry about that next time I will try to read all the instructions before submitting a comment! I think I was just suddenly a little bit overwhemled by IRC. Anyway, thanks for the awesome tutorial, I found a whole bunch of books that I was looking for.
DukeLupus’ dlFilter mIRC script will make getting e-books much easier. http://dukelupus.com/
It routes different types of messages to different windows. All the chatter in the #bookz channel goes into one window, server messages go to another and your search results go to yet another window instead of individual windows for every server bot.
I don’t know if that script works with IRChighway but it’s great on undernet!
Hi,
This is my first time attempting to get books for an IRC channel and I am having some problems.
After I get the search results I copy and paste the entire command but sometimes the #bookz bot doesn’t seem to understand my command and doesn’t send me a request to download the file. Other times it works just fine when I copy and paste and the bot DOES send me file to download.
Am I doing something wrong?I would like to able to download books each time. I don’t see how I am copy and pasting incorrectly.
Thanks so much for taking the time to read my question. I hope you are able to get back to me.
-n00b
hmm, make sure you strip the pasted text of unnecessary characters. this is usually due to colored text.
The first character should always be “!” and it should end with the extension name of the file.
Thanks! It worked but then it stopped working again.
!fanboy Hard-boiled wonderland and the end of th – Haruki Murakami.epub ::INFO:: 786.1KB
is there a character i shouldn’t copy and paste from this? (aside from the info/kb part)
nope… that should be the correct string. when you say it worked… a part of it gets transferred then it stopped again? maybe your connection is slow? some bots have a minimum transfer rate that your connection should meet, if you below that you will automatically get cut off.
I just tried it again and I have entered any other search options or file downloads for 5 hours and it still didn’t work. My connection isn’t slow. Not sure what it is, I’ll copy and paste another string that isn’t the one I posted above and it’ll work. I don’t know it’s being picky with the files I want to download. :[
thank you for all your help. i appreciate it.
i think the problem then is the source. somehow it can’t communicate with your connection. look for other sources instead.