UNIX

Mac

Windows

Firewalls

UNIX

The basic telnet provided on UNIX works fine, if a little inelegantly. You may have firewall concerns (see below). If you prefer, a MUD client such as TinyFugue (aka tf) will work as well. To connect to a talker from UNIX simply type: telnet host port at the prompt, like so:

korova:/home/alexis 75 % telnet mudhole.ehche.ac.uk 4444

Macintosh

The standard NCSA telnet works wonderfully on Macintosh. Simply download it to your Desktop and double click to install it. It's distributed as a BinHexed StuffIt archive. After installing it, go to the `Open Connection' dialog box (Command-O) and type the address you wish to connect to in the `Host' space, making sure to include the port number if one is specified.

Windows 3.1 / 95

Most Windows telnets are utterly crap, and present a major problem for some sites: these apps operate only in character mode, making it impossible for the user to talk on sites that only allow line-mode (the default for UNIX telnet) COLD in particular. If you find that every time you type a character, the talker behaves as if you've hit enter (you can only type one letter at a time) you're in character mode when you should be in line mode.

I've found 2 solutions to this problem:

a. Use a MUD client.

The best MUD client, Zmud, presents a problem in that most of the punctuation characters are reserved as commands. Talkers, which expect many of the same characters, don't work very well with it. The tried-and-true MUD client is WinWorlds, which I have attached to this page, version 0.1a. To install it:

1. Download both wwrld02.zip and vbrun300.zip by clicking on the links in Netscape. The first file is the program; the second is a Visual Basic library that is missing on some PCs.

2. Unzip both files using a program such as WinZip.

3. Move the vbrun300.dll file (from vbrun300.zip) and the .vbx files from wwrld02.zip into your \windows\system directory.

4. Move the other files from wwrld02.zip into the directory of your choice.

b. Use NetTerm.

NetTerm is a standard, very full featured telnet program available via shareware. It is available from papa.indstate.edu and its mirrors. Nnt16420.exe is for 16 bit (Win3.1) and nt32420i.exe is the 32 bit (Win95 and NT) version. It's distributed as a self-extracting executable file; simply run the program to install it.

The only problem I've experienced with NetTerm is that, at least on the Windows 3.1 system I used it on, it did not correctly display non-ASCII characters. Instead of, say, an é (e with an accent) I would get a symbol character. My guess as to why is because the PC and UNIX character sets are different, but I'm no expert.

Firewalls

A firewall is an electronic barrier between your site and the rest of the Internet. They vary in level of restrictiveness, but what they all have in common is a desire to restrict, in some way, connections between your site and those `beyond the firewall'. This can present problems when one is trying to use talkers, as alternate port numbers may be blocked, or you can't telnet directly at all.

Firewalls are most commonly used at corporations and universities; private providers don't tend to restrict the sites available to their users. The simple (but not infallible) test to see if you're firewalled is to go to the Network Preferences dialog in Netscape and look under `proxies'. If you're configured to use a proxy server you're probably firewalled. Try turning proxies off, then going to the Netscape home page (or any page not within your domain). If it works, then your proxy is only a cache server, which is basically a sophisticated, big version of the Netscape cache. If it doesn't work, you're firewalled, at least for HTTP connections; contact your systems administrator for details. Remember, though, if your boss thinks you're playing on company time, you may not be employed for long!