Goof's Garage Echo in Muffinterm?

[Cube Inc]

Hi Brent, I saw your feedback. Can you post a picture of what you are seeing here?

[hendrb01]

Here you go.

Screenshot 2023-06-28 at 7.52.45 AM.png (299.01 KiB) Viewed 16668 times

[hendrb01]

Here is a better example. The above just looks like I am drunk in Chat!

Screenshot 2023-06-24 at 10.15.24 AM.jpg (119.4 KiB) Viewed 16664 times

[Cube Inc]

That is really strange. Everything you typed looked normal on my end - I heard you log on earlier and tried to catch you in chat but just got the chat check mark set after you'd already logged off, so when you went to log on the next time, it dropped you straight into chat.

X-Tec has been on the board a few times and never mentioned anything, and it seems fine when I connect with CGTerm. Unfortunately I don't have much of a userbase at the moment...

I'm not suggesting this as a fix, just a means of troubleshooting: Have you tried a different terminal?

It is odd because it does not appear to be a consistent echo. IE: You are not getting two of every character you type, or if you are - perhaps after a varying delay. I do notice a bit more delay / lag when I type messages on your board as opposed to others - which makes sense given the greater distance of travel (which is still insanely fast considering the there-and-back-again distance!) but I wonder where the "extra" returned characters are coming from. I should have taken a screen shot of my end for comparison because I saw what you had typed there perfectly. So from there, either Image sent back strangely echoed characters, tcpser sent back strangely echoed characters, or something in your terminal displayed strangely echoed characters.

I have restarted both tcpser and Image - not sure if that will make any difference but I'm shooting in a lot of directions in the dark, trying to find something to home in on as a potential cause.

[hendrb01]

Yes, I did.. I used MacOS terminal (Unix nicely has one of those)...

I did not get the echo, but the terminal requires linefeeds.

I can try SynchTerm tomorrow evening, not my favorite terminal program, but what the heck! Good to try and rule this out anyway.
Ahh, I do have CGTerm compiled on MacMini.

It is fine on CGTerm.

I do not like to use CGTerm, because it crashes if I try and go full screen.

I wonder what it is with MuffinTerm that does this. You are currently the ONLY board that has this issue.

[Cube Inc]

That does not prove that there is nothing [unusual] about my board (or setup), it just helps narrow down what we need to look at. After all that time I spent digging into the IP232 and Telnet IAC (Interpret As Command) stuff when I was tinkering around with tcpser, that would be the first place to look, especially since there are Telnet session control commands for handling both echo and carriage returns. We could set up a tcpdump / Wireshark trace the next time you connect with Muffin Term and see if it is actively sending any Telnet commands upon initiation of the connection. Or maybe it isn't and the other terminal programs are? Either way, I am sure this will be interesting to figure out!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telnet

[hendrb01]

Let me know when you want to do this.. I will not be available until the afternoon of the 4th (My time), as I am doing some traveling, and do not plan on doing anything computer related (Except maybe connecting to the BBS occasionally).

[Cube Inc]

I've started tcpdump running on the bbs port and capture all the incoming / outgoing traffic as hex bytes, so we should be able to see exactly what data my end is receiving and sending the next time you call.

[hendrb01]

Okay. I can connect tonight via MuffinTerm. Then when I get home on Tuesday from CGTerm so you will have both connection types to base it from.

Sorry, I do not have CGTerm installed on my notebook.

[Cube Inc]

Here's what I've seen from the login you made the other day (I have blanked out your IP address in case you don't care to have it public) - I think it may explain why you are seeing what you are seeing with the strange echos in Muffinterm:

XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841-010.010.000.101.06400:
0000: fffb 00ff fb03 fffd 00ff fd03 fffd 01 ...............

If we break this down, it reads as follows:
0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfb WILL
0x00 Binary Transmission

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd WILL
0x03 Suppress Go-Ahead

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd DO
0x00 Binary Transmission

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd DO
0x03 Suppress Go-Ahead

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd DO
0x01 Echo

Your terminal has asked my side to perform binary transmissions, not to send any go-ahead commands, and to perform the echoing of characters. It has also indicated that it will send binary data and will not send any Go-Ahead commands.

And then my side (tcpser) responds with the following:

010.010.000.101.06400-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841:
0000: fffd 00 ...

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd DO
0x00 Binary Transmission

My side (tcpser) asked your terminal to send binary data, which it already indicated it would.

010.010.000.101.06400-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841:
0000: fffd 03ff fb00 fffb 0341 540d 0a .........AT..

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfd DO
0x03 Suppress Go-Ahead

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfb WILL
0x00 Binary Transmission

0xff Telnet IAC Byte
0xfb WILL
0x03 Suppress Go-Ahead

My side (tcpser) asked your terminal not to send any Go-Ahead commands, and then indicates that it will perform binary transmissions and will not send any Go-Ahead commands. After that, in-band data begins and you can see the AT<cr><lf> that was meant for the modem, which is already in data mode, followed by the ATA command and then the Image BBS welcome screen.

010.010.000.101.06400-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841:
0000: 41 A

010.010.000.101.06400-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841:
0000: 5441 0d0a 0d0a 07 TA.....

010.010.000.101.06400-XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX.62841:
0000: 0d0a 2020 2020 2020 2049 4d41 4745 2042 4253 2036 3420 5633 2e30 2028 4329 2032 .. IMAGE BBS 64 V3.0 (C) 2
0020: 3032 3020 0d0a 0d0a 434f 4e4e 4543 5449 4f4e 2043 4f4e 4649 524d 4544 3a20 2033 020 ....CONNECTION CONFIRMED: 3
0040: 3834 3030 0d0a 1b5b 366e 0d0a 8400...[6n..

(Here are the relevant Telnet option code descriptions for reference)

Code: Select all

      WILL (option code)  251    Indicates the desire to begin
                                 performing, or confirmation that
                                 you are now performing, the
                                 indicated option.
      WON'T (option code) 252    Indicates the refusal to perform,
                                 or continue performing, the
                                 indicated option.
      DO (option code)    253    Indicates the request that the
                                 other party perform, or
                                 confirmation that you are expecting
                                 the other party to perform, the
                                 indicated option.
      DON'T (option code) 254    Indicates the demand that the
                                 other party stop performing,
                                 or confirmation that you are no
                                 longer expecting the other party
                                 to perform, the indicated option.

Did you catch what happened there? It is subtle, but tcpser on my side did not reply to your request that (tcpser) perform the echoing of characters. I am not certain that it has to, strictly speaking, but I wonder if that lack of response is what is throwing your terminal off? The transaction basically reads "I'm expecting you to echo characters back to me" but because this is never actually confirmed, perhaps it then takes the onus upon itself to echo characters anyway? And quite possibly other terminal programs treat it as though, "Well I told you that I expect you to echo characters, and you didn't reply so I'm going to assume that means you will." Or they may not implement the Telnet protocol at all, which you might be able to see during the initial connection as some "garabge" bytes on the screen. In which case, that terminal would just send any data you type and display any data it receives, including any Telnet IAC bytes and/or IP232 bytes that are not correctly stripped out by tcpser.

I'm going to take a look at the tcpser code again and see if I can find out why it acknowledged all of the other negotiations except for echo. If so, it should be pretty trivial to fix that, and then anyone with Muffinterm should have no trouble connecting to my BBS.