Need a BBS-friendly (ANSI) telnet client for OSX

Tintin++, TinyFugue, Savitar, Mudwalker and Atlantis are all designed specifically for MUD/MUSH/MUCK/MOO/etc. type games. These are different than door games.

MUD/MUSH type games send things like ANSI color, MCP extended sequences (which allow passing out-of-band data to plugins), MXP sequences (basically, HTML over telnet), etc. Door games not only send old-style IBM Extended ASCII (line-drawing characters and suchnot) where most Mac terminal applications are Unicode, but also in many cases will send ANSI cursor movement sequences (which many MUD/MUSH clients neither support, nor need to).

In short, the requirements for a MUD/MUSH/MUCK client to be useful are vastly different than those for a terminal client to be useful for playing BBS door games! I'm the author of the aforementioned Atlantis; I can honestly say I've never even considered using it for door games. It does what it's designed for, and door games ain't that.

I /do/ also play door games (gimme my TradeWars 2002, darnit!), but I've always just used MacWise. If you have the X11 package for OS X installed and need a freer alternative, luit should be sufficient to enable what you want in an ANSI-enabled X11 Terminal. It'll be slower than a straight Cocoa solution, and require a little more technical jiggery-pokery, but the price is definitely lower than MacWise. ;P

Luit's manual page can be found here, or 'man luit' if you have X11 installed on your Mac; it comes in X11 by default.

This message will obviously come very late for the OP, but to date, the ONLY free telnet client I have found which fully and properly displays all ANSI characters, such as on an old-time BBS, is syncTERM. It displays better than iTerm, dataComet, the OSX terminal, etc.

Granted, syncTERM is very unMac-like in appearance, (some would say ugly), and clunky, but, as I said, it is the only OSX telnet client that I have personally found that works. All you really have to do is enter the BBS name and domain name in its directory, and you are pretty much ready to go.

Let me mention that you may want to find a copy of version 0.8, as the current version as of this date, (0.9.2), crashes immediately upon launching...at least on my G4 Tiger machine. Let me know how it goes if you try it out.

Thanks!

I guess times change...

It is sad how few applications there are for calling BBS's, and probably even sadder how few bbs's there are left out there.

I run a BBS off of my Amiga 1200 (spatulacity.servebbs.org) but use an intel iMac as my primary system. I have found that the best "BBS Calling" terminal program for the Mac is exactly what RumorzGuy said, Syncterm. SyncTERM doesn't feel like a modern OSX app, as a matter of fact it looks like a dos program from 1985 but you know, that is part of the charm. You really look like you are back on an old DOS PC calling a BBS.

Like the OP said, the other programs like iTerm require fonts that are hard to come by to do correct BBS ANSI characters. MacWISE is a WYSE terminal emulator and a damn fine one at that, but not the kind of thing you want to call a BBS with. iTerm would be perfect if you could find the right fonts for it but out of the box the it doesn't support fonts used by most BBS systems. Also the interface and setup is kind of backwards and obviously not geared toward calling BBS systems like Syncterm is.

Well, I am happy to say that Stephen Hurd/Deuce is still very much actively developing SyncTERM, although he has made it clear to me via email that he does it primarily for his own personal use, and isn't really interested in acquiring a large SyncTERM "fan base", which is why you don't see him advertising SyncTERM all over the place. In spite of that, just recently, I convinced him to finally add SyncTERM to the VersionTracker website, and he also updated his listing on MacUpdate as well.

I have been working closely with Stephen over the past few weeks, reporting bugs and problems with the Macintosh version of SyncTERM, and there is now a version of SyncTERM 0.9.2 which does not have the crashing upon launch problem that I mentioned in my previous post. In fact, just yesterday, Stephen wrote to me telling me that 0.9.3 will soon be out the door. The problem had to do with the SDL.

However, Stephen hasn't officially released the non-crashing version of SyncTERM 0.9.2 yet, but I have made it available via the following link, if anyone is interested, until he does:

http://www.endtimeprophecy.org/Files/SyncTERM.sit

I will try to keep that link updated with the latest version as Stephen releases them. You never know when he might disappear off the face of the planet, as so many developers eventually do. It's a conspiracy, I tell you!

I also created some extra docs for the .dmg, including a special "Notes For Macintosh Users" file which explains some of SyncTERM's basic operations, such as how to add entries to the BBS directory, and a few other items. Stephen isn't exactly big on writing documentation...and you know us Mac users always wanting to be led by the hand!

I've also put my old BBS back online, Armageddon Christian BBS, which you can access via a webpage using the terminal java applet there, or better yet, directly, using SyncTERM. Just go to the domain name endtimeprophecy.org using the standard telnet port of 23. This is a small Christian-oriented BBS running on Hermes II software, and is not dedicated to door games, but there are over a thousand files to download for Christians, particularly Christian Macintosh users.

Oh, and BTW, for the record, the latest version of iTerm STILL does not properly display BBS ANSI graphics. I'm happy to stick with clunky ole SyncTERM!

If you encounter any problems with the version of SyncTERM that I am sharing, my contact info is in the "Notes" file. You can also leave a comment here, and I will eventually find it.

Enjoy, and have fun BBSing the 1980's way!

Thank you so much for this posting! I just finished playing a bunch of door games in Full ANSI color and graphics, just like I remember them. Once again, thank you so much.

HoyeBoye said:

Thank you so much for this posting! I just finished playing a bunch of door games in Full ANSI color and graphics, just like I remember them. Once again, thank you so much.

Click to expand...

Hello HoyeBoye. Glad to have been of help to you. I hope that you will take time to stop by the Armageddon BBS, (endtimeprophecy.org), say hello, and post a message or two in our message conferences. If you have any questions regarding the Macintosh version of SyncTERM, I can be of help to you with that as well, as I have set up a SyncTERM support conference on the Armageddon BBS. You might also want to engage in an old game of LEECH.

Take care,

RumorzGuy

SyncTerm copy-and-paste

Hey RumorzGuy,

Like you, I love SyncTerm. The one problem for me is that the most recent versions are crippled on the Mac: copy-and-paste does not work.

Deuce has explained to me that the API he was relying on to provide copy and paste on the Mac side has been deprecated by Apple. That's why it no longer works.

He told me by email:

If you know someone who is familiar with OS X programming in ObjC, it
should be relatively trivial for that person to write a wrapper which
can be called from C to enable copy/paste in SyncTERM.

Click to expand...

I am not such a person. But I wonder if anyone out there might be? I really, really want to be able to copy and paste between SyncTerm and other programs.

I use Minicom on a variety of unix systems, including OS X. I don't use it for playing games, but rather for console access to network devices. However, years ago I also used it for accessing BBS's. It has a variety of terminal options, which may suit what you're looking for. It is a close clone to the old PC "Telix" terminal program.

Honestly SyncTerm is just about perfect for me. It offers terrific emulation for PC-ANSI, ATASCII (8-bit Atari), and PETSCII (8-bit Commodore) BBSes. It supports Zmodem and other file transfer protocols.

The only thing it lacks is copy and paste, and that is only because the programmer doesn't have access to a Mac to fix what's broken.

If the guy developing SyncTERM could get with the iTerm guy to fix the font issue for drawing line characters in iTerm in a manner similar to how it's done in SyncTERM, this would make iTerm perfect.

SyncTerm on its own is really bad with no cut-n-paste functionality as of right now. It DOES manage to render the ansi line drawing characters and extended ascii/ansi perfectly, though - which is currently the only thing I like about it.

Why can't iTerm or even better... native "terminal" just do this correctly?

Problem solved!!

Step 1. Install at least one of the following fonts below:
awwsheezy.com/perfect_dos_vga_437.zip
awwsheezy.com/linedraw.zip

Step 2. Install iTerm
http://iterm.sourceforge.net/

Step 3. Open iTerm, change a couple settings.
a. Go into preferences -> Profiles -> Text
Set the font for both "Regular Font" and "Non-ASCII Font" to one of the three fonts I've asked you to install earlier. I am currently using "11pt Perfect DOS VGA 437".
b. Go into preferences -> Profiles -> Terminal
Under "Terminal Emulation" -> "Character Encoding" - change the encoding from the default (Unicode UTF-8) to "Western ASCII".

I've just posted this on my blog as well
http://awwsheezy.com/2013/03/03/cp437-ibm-extended-ascii-in-osx-terminal-for-bbss-bitchx-ansi-etc/

... Hmmm... not impressed yet

Glad you wrote that up, and I'm excited to give those fonts a try!

But I don't understand your dislike of SyncTerm. Almost the *only* strike I see against it is the broken copy-and-paste. I realize a lot of Mac folks dislike it's SDL-rendered interface, which makes it distinctively non-Mac-like. As a Mac guy myself, I get that. But SyncTerm's purpose is to offer superior emulation when connecting with PC, Commodore, and Atari 8-bit BBSes. It's not meant to be a Mac command-line terminal.

But putting those issues aside, it is far and away the best client for calling ANSI BBSes and MUDS. It handles file transfers, it supports the game Operation Overkill's custom terminal, and as I mentioned before it even emulates Commodore and 8-bit Atari terminals. It even offers full screen mode on the Mac (alt-enter).

You gloss over SyncTerm's superior ANSI rendering though. No other terminal comes close, even with the right fonts. ANSI music, animations, and even the color palette usually render wrong in other terminals.

I find iTerm to be a muddled mess. Resizing the window is a nightmare. Setting up a session just the way I want it is also an exercise in frustration, as important bits are abstracted into three different kinds of "profiles." You then have to set up a "bookmark" with the appropriate profiles... And none of this actually falls under "Preferences" as indicated in your blog post. iTerm doesn't even support Mac OS X full screen mode, which one would expect of a native app.

Kirkman said:

Glad you wrote that up, and I'm excited to give those fonts a try!

But I don't understand your dislike of SyncTerm.

Click to expand...

I guess my use-case was just entirely different. I'm sure that as a terminal client for connecting to BBS's w/file transfer capability etc that it's great - also on my blog post I mentioned that SyncTerm was the only thing that out-of-the-box was able to render the ANSI / extended ascii correctly.

I was looking for something as a replacement / fix for the extended ascii issue on the native Terminal / OSX app, though. Sorry if it sounded like I was talking crap or whatever - it just wasn't what I needed.

Mac OS X Terminal Now Works Great!

Well, this is coming kind of late -- like two years late -- but as many of you will probably already know, with the latest releases of Mac OS X -- particularly Yosemite -- the Terminal app works great for BBSing and displays everything properly and beautifully. You just have to make sure you have it set up properly.

To assist you in this matter, I have done two things:

1. I have created a terminal settings file -- which you simply double-click -- by exporting the settings from my own Terminal app. This file is downloadable from my Armageddon BBS web page, as well as from the Armageddon BBS itself.

2. For even more detailed and precise settings, I have also written a tutorial for the Mac OS X Terminal app. This tutorial is in PDF format, and can also be downloaded from my Armageddon BBS web page, as well as from the Armageddon BBS itself.

Just look at the table of links which is located on the bottom of this page, and you will find what you need:

http://www.armageddonbbs.com

There is even a link for a tutorial I just wrote, which will lead you step-by-step in compiling the Hermes II BBS source code using Mac OS X and SheepShaver. BTW, the latest version of Hermes is now 3.5.11, which I am now running on my own board.

Goodbye SyncTERM, you ugly old thing. I haven't used it in years!

better solution

I absolutely could not get the "Terminal" default app to display ANSI characters properly.. however, I *DID* end up discovering a much better terminal application that DOES display ANSI characters properly, called "iTerm".

Encoding: Western (ASCII)
Font: TopazPlus a500a1000a2000 - anti-aliased checkbox checked
Report Terminal Type: xterm

It's the difference between this:
http://i.imgur.com/DRqkutA.png

and this:
http://i.imgur.com/UnHwVBG.png

The Mac OS X Terminal Works Fine

As I said, if you download my Mac OS X settings file, or follow the instructions in my tutorial -- both available at the above URL -- you will get amazing results in the Terminal. If you need proof, here are screen captures of my own BBS taken in the Terminal on Yosemite:

I followed your guide, at http://www.billkochman.com/BBS/Mac-OSX-Terminal-Settings.pdf , and there must be something you forgot to mention, because I still see funky characters in the Terminal window.

This is what my "env" output is in terminal:
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
SHELL=/bin/bash
TERM=xterm-256color
CLICOLOR=1
TMPDIR=/var/folders/fp/78f7q2m90gv9l200v4z7788c0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.Fe7uNiHLmw/Render
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=343.6
TERM_SESSION_ID=3AC7EAF0-1929-4B25-9A1B-EA2189833F08
USER=Mike
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.1huPSK7wvD/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x0
LSCOLORS=ExFxBxDxCxegedabagacad
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/usr/local/go/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:/usr/local/git/bin:/sw/bin:/sw/sbin
PWD=/Users/Mike
LANG=en_US.US-ASCII
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
PS1=\[\033[36m\]\u\[\033[m\]@\[\033[32m\]\h:\[\033[33;1m\]\w\[\033[m\]$
IRCNAME=blahblahblah
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
SHLVL=1
HOME=/Users/Mike
LOGNAME=Mike
DISPLAY=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.obtNzradfs/org.macosforge.xquartz:0
_=/usr/bin/env

My friend, the tutorial is fine. The above images are proof. I suspect that you must have missed something or done something wrong.

Instead of using the tutorial, download the terminal settings file from that same page.

Just double-click the settings file after you extract it from the zipped archive.

Then try logging on to my BBS and see how it looks.

I assure you that both the guide and the settings file work great.

What kind of Mac are you on, and which OS are you using>

I just attempted to use your settings file directly, and still no dice.

I'm on OSX Yosemite with a MBP Retina.

Odd indeed. They both work great for me. I am sorry that I cannot help you more. I am also on Yosemite, so . . . ???

----------

Did you try changing xterm-256color to ANSI instead to see if that makes a difference?

RumorzGuy said:

Odd indeed. They both work great for me. I am sorry that I cannot help you more. I am also on Yosemite, so . . . ???

----------

Did you try changing xterm-256color to ANSI instead to see if that makes a difference?

Click to expand...

Yep - also messed around with different types of encodings..

You know what just occurred to me? Perhaps you don't have the right font installed. Let me check here and see what I am using. That will make a difference, because only certain fonts can properly display PC-ANSI graphics.

RumorzGuy said:

You know what just occurred to me? Perhaps you don't have the right font installed. Let me check here and see what I am using. That will make a difference, because only certain fonts can properly display PC-ANSI graphics.

Click to expand...

I wrote an article a while back on how I managed to get my setup going with iTerm.. within that article, I included a couple fonts that worked for me to display full ANSI:

http://awwsheezy.com/2013/03/03/cp437-ibm-extended-ascii-in-osx-terminal-for-bbss-bitchx-ansi-etc/

I tried using both of those fonts with "Terminal" and your config, still no dice.

Try This Font. It is What I Use.

Okay, I just uploaded a new zipped archive to my Armageddon BBS home page. Look at the bottom of the page for the "ASCII TrueType Font" link. It includes a Read Me file in text and PDF.

It is a little tricky, because the font does not appear in Font Book as "ASCII" when you install it. Rather, it is called "New". Weird, I know.

This is the font that I am using.

I hope this resolves your issues, but no promises.