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Telnet65

Oliver Schmidt edited this page Jul 30, 2022 · 17 revisions

Telnet65 is a Telnet client with a VT100 terminal emulation. The network part is based on IP65 and the terminal part is based on CaTer.

It is currently available for the C64, the enhanced Apple //e and the Atari.

Telnet65 doesn't support a static IP configuration so a DHCP server is obligatory.

Modern remote systems presume a terminal to support the UTF-8 character encoding. On POSIX systems you can check that with locale. However - just like the original VT100 terminal - Telnet65 doesn't know anything about UTF-8. Therefore you should make your remote programs aware that they mustn't send UTF-8 but stick to classic 7-bit ASCII by setting the environment variable LANG to C.

If you're using Bash you can have that done automatically by adding to .profile the following lines:

if [ "$TERM" = "vt100" ]; then
    export LANG=C
fi

C64

The C64 version of Telnet65 supports the RR-Net and the ETH64 Ethernet devices. It does not support a soft80 display.

Telnet65 makes use of the C64 color capabilities in two ways. Please read the CaTer Docu - ESC Sequences section Select Graphic Rendition (SGR) to understand them.

You need to check out CaTer Docu - Keyboard in order to know the mapping of C64 keys to VT100 keys. The eight C64 F-keys are mapped as well, but as the original VT100 terminal has only four F-keys the the rest of the C64 F-keys are not recognized by most remote programs.

The key combination C=+Q quits the current Telnet session.

Enhanced Apple //e

The Apple //e version of Telnet65 supports the Uthernet, the LANceGS and the Uthernet II Ethernet cards. It doesn't support the VT100 character attributes bold or underline. So you e.g. aren't able to see which files you have selected for a multi-file operation in Midnight Commander.

Telnet65 presumes the Ethernet card to reside in slot 3. If however your Ethernet card resides in a different slot you can change the fourth byte of the Telnet65 binary to match your Ethernet card slot.

The four Apple //e cursor keys generate the same codes as the key combinations Ctrl+H, Ctrl+J, Ctrl+K and Ctrl+U. Therefore entering those key combinations doesn't send them to the Telnet server but instead sends the four VT100 cursor movement codes. However you can send the key combinations in question to the Telnet server by entering them while holding down the Open Apple key.

The key combination Open Apple+Q quits the current Telnet session.

ATARI

The ATARI version of Telnet65 supports the Dragon Cart Ethernet device. It uses a 40x24 screen layout and writes directly to screen memory. Therefore no 80 column displays (e.g. XEP80 or VBXE) are supported.

The ATARI system keyboard handler doesn't provide access to all potential control codes or special characters. Press HELP or OPTION+H to get help about entering those codes/characters.

The key combination OPTION+Q quits the current Telnet session.

Midnight Commander

The hints below are by no means specific to Telnet65. They are rather just some useful general Midnight Commander usage info.

Use ESC+1 to ESC+0 as alternative to the ten F-keys. Press ESC twice to "escape". Use Ctrl+T to toggle the selection for multi-file operations.

On the C64 you can start Midnight Commander with the option -c to force the usage of colors although the original VT100 terminal doesn't support colors.

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