[Haskell-cafe] Problem with searching mailing-lists archives

Hi Cafe,
I was trying to search for the following Haskell functions in the mailing
list archives. Here is a summary of the responses I have had from various
servers upon searching various "valid and normally used" Haskell function
identifiers.

Responses from the http://www.mail-archive.com
 >>=,
It seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*; &*gt*;"
* -> *There
are 0 results.
and so on...

Responses from the http://search.gmane.org
>>=
Here, too, it seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*; &*gt*;"
* -> *
Here it seems the script searched for the string "&*gt*;"
and so on...

*Note: google badly fails to search these functions identifiers.*

My current solution to this problem is: download compressed text archives
and do a simple grep on it on my machine.

But the archives up to year 2000 only are found at
http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/.
So, as an aside: Where do I find the earlier messages for downloading?

Thanks,
Damodar