For those of you curious about what the Star Wars one looked like, the tradition lives on here: ssh -p 1977 sw.taigrr.com
A list of fun destinations for telnet
31–40 of 115 posts
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#32My first introduction to the internet was through the telnet-based EW-too talkers like Foothills (Boston U) and Forest (UTS). I have very fond memories of staying up late talking to people from all over the globe. It was truly amazing to me.
The best part was how the users moderated behaviour - bad actors were ejected swiftly but rarely permanently.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#33I was wondering why the Starwars one is not at the top of the list. Then I saw it no longer exists :-(
It still exists, and still works. I was sure I showed it to someone a few months ago, and just confirmed, it's still online. (I know the guy who built it). It works over ipv4 and v6, with the ipv6 version having some additions ;)
Thanks! Admittedly I didn't check before writing my comment. It does indeed still work! Maybe one has to enable ipv6.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#34The first BBS I used in the 80's eventually ended up with a telnet daemon but its owner passed away and I think the person that took it over eventually shut lois.org down. Domain is still registered. I can't fault them, it was an ancient system.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its still running just fine
Connecting to it times out for me. traceroute: ... 15 213.136.2.6 35.049 ms 34.440 ms 34.338 ms 16 213.136.2.20 34.814 ms 33.359 ms 35.116 ms 17 213.154.229.42 33.837 ms 33.572 ms 34.794 ms 18 213.136.8.188 30.174 ms 28.810 ms 33.674 ms tcptraceroute ... 23 : ... 15 213.136.2.6 28.626 ms 28.657 ms 28.849 ms 16 213.136.2.20 28.608 ms 28.483 ms 28.515 ms 17 213.154.229.42 27.989 ms 28.058 ms 29.336 ms 18 * * *
Ah, it must be ipv6 only now then:
My traceroute [v0.95] ..... @@@@@ @@@@@ ...........
...... @ @ @ @ ..........
....... @@@ @ @ .........
........ @@ @ @ ........
........ @@@@@@@ @@@@@ th .......
....... ----------------------- ......
...... C E N T U R Y .....
..... ----------------------- ....
... @@@@@ @@@@@ @ @ @@@@@ ...
== @ @ @ @ @ ==
__||__ @ @@@@ @ @ __||__
| | @ @ @ @ @ | |
_________|______|_____ @ @@@@@ @ @ @ _____|______|_________
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#36I can forsee a future when all the AI slop, popups, fake news, propaganda and ads have fully consumed the web. Maybe then we just go back to an oldschool text based way of communicating. No google. No socials. Just text.
That should be Gopher for websites but advertisers would find it should it become popular. Text chat via IRCD. Advertisers get banned on IRC.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#37~/work/...> telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl zsh: command not found: telnet
Search your OS repositories for something like inetutils-telnet.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#38The Star Wars ASCII animation was how I learned telnet existed. Felt like discovering a secret passage in the internet. There's something pure about text-based interfaces. No loading spinners, no JavaScript frameworks, no cookie banners. Just text.
Wanting to know how email worked and then stumbling on it being mentioned next to the relevant RFCs was my first exposure! You could easily check pop3 mail over telnet, by sending all the commands by hand. HELO! I then made my first email client, then an RFC later, and after browsing the web through telnet for a while, made my first web server!
I think I was the only one in the operations team who knew how to use telnet to check connections and existence of adresses on company and outside email servers.
As well as other low level tools to diagnose problems with Windows PCs and servers. There just weren't any gui tools like that.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#39uff I hope i can list my MUD game (still in dev, though)
Say more, what’s the influence? My favorite branches were Diku/Merc and Circle based. SMAUG, Envy, ROM. Somewhere on a hard drive lives Abyss of Curak, my colorful and (in 1998) briefly popular MUD.
Re: A list of fun destinations for telnet
#40If you run stuff like ZeroTier or Tailscale or any other encrypted mesh or VPN you can just run telnetd and happily remote access with plain text.
Not that it buys you anything other than being retro. :)