Gnus: How to catch up huge newsgroups?

[Joe Fineman]

I run Gnus v5.10.6 under Emacs 21.3.1 under Windows XP (alas).
Because Verizon has truncated its service, I recently signed on to a
latitudinarian news server (Motzarella).  I find that four of the
newsgroups I want to read come up with backlogs on the order of 30
million postings.  When I try to do catchup (C) on one of them, it
stalls & eventually gives an out-of-memory message.  (The first time,
when I let it try for a longish time, it ended up giving interminable
beeps & hanging both Emacs and Windows; I had to do a hardware
shutdown.)

What does one do in such a situation?  I see nothing about it in info
or Google or the Gnus FAQ.

I have tried twice to post this query on gnu.emacs.gnus (a moderated
group), but it has not appeared, nor have I received any reason for
its rejection.  I have also sent email to the proprietor of
Motzarella, who was courteous & patient in helping me to set up, but I
have received no reply.  If, likewise, this query does not belong on
gnu.emacs.help, I would be grateful for advice on where it would be on
topic.
-- 
---  Joe Fineman    joe_f@verizon.net

||:  If you can keep your head while all about you are losing    :||
||:  theirs, you don't appreciate the gravity of the situation.  :||