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Recommendations on DOS Terminal Emulator

trmg

Experienced Member
Joined
Dec 20, 2016
Messages
100
Location
Northern California
Hey All,

I want to play around with dialing into BBSes on my DOS/Win3.11 486 (yes, using a modem :D). What terminal emulation software would you recommend for this task?

Thanks!
 
I'll mention Windows has Hyperterminal as part of its suite. As for Dos I've used a terminal called bananaCom. A few others can be found on this site http://www.bttr-software.de/freesoft/comm1.htm

If you don't want to pay toll charges it may be better using a nic and telneting to a BBS. Obviously you don't get the modem sounds but the rest of the BBSs experience is there. Do look at the mTCP suite of programs also, as there is a Dos telnet client available. http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/mTCP_Telnet.html

BBS list http://synchro.net/sbbslist.html
 
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Back in the early 90's, I used Procomm Plus to dial in to BBSes... it always seemed to work without much difficulty.
 
Telemate was a very popular and powerful DOS terminal program for BBSing. Among other things, it had a built in command.com-like interpreter that you could use for DOS file manipulation without exiting the program.
 
Back in the day when the IBM 5150 PC was current technology I used either the commercial terminal emulation and file transfer software Crosstalk which I bought, don't remember if it was Crosstalk XVI or a different version, or the free terminal emulation and file transfer software MS-Kermit.
 
Try a few different terminal emulators. Most of them had unique macro languages so deciding which language you can tolerate important.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, all!

@Caluser2000 - Toll charges aren't an issue as long as I'm dialing within the continental US. I'm familiar with using telnet to access BBSes, which I could do now (the box has a NIC). I want to try going full-retro with the "dial in" experience both in sound and speed. :D We'll see how it goes as I'm using VoIP (oh the irony). The provider (Nettalk) supports faxing (which I've done successfully many times), so I have hopes that I can dial into a BBS. At what speed, who knows...
 
Think the last term software I used was called Commo?

If you just need a nice, small VT-102 terminal emulator, hunt down DGTERM.
It's a tiny (27K?) TSR which also does some protocol transfers.

Andy
 
My constraint is that the terminal program and all of its supporting files **must** fit on a 720K diskette.

So far, the only one that I've gotten to work nicely is Commo.

Just wondering if anyone had other recommendations.
 
My constraint is that the terminal program and all of its supporting files **must** fit on a 720K diskette.

So far, the only one that I've gotten to work nicely is Commo.

Just wondering if anyone had other recommendations.

Procomm for DOS will fit onto a 360kb floppy disk. That still leaves plenty for DOS.
 
I used to use Terminate which was excellent. It had lots of built-in features and terminal emulation modes. It was a joy to use.

Ya, Terminate was the last program I used before I stopped calling BBSs (actually, it was because BBSs went away in my local area). It was very nice, but certainly won't run on the very constrained vintage computer that I have.
 
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