# Telnet Equiv. for Mac?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 3, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511 "2002-04-03T00:25:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Mike\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/977dab/32.png) [@Mike\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mike_B)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511/1 "2002-04-03T00:25:43Z")

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Is there an equivalent of Windows Telnet on Mac OS 8 or 9 (sorry, not sure which)

How would one go about getting to it? What is the basic command to open a connection?

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**Author:** ![Kirkland1244](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/dc4da7/32.png) [@Kirkland1244](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kirkland1244)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511/2 "2002-04-03T01:12:31Z")

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NCSA TelNet for Mac 3.0a20 is available from [Download.com](http://Download.com). Never used it, though.

In Mac OS X, you just fire up Terminal and type “telnet.”

Kirk

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**Author:** ![Max\_Torque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e9bcb4/32.png) [@Max\_Torque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Max_Torque)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511/3 "2002-04-03T01:23:04Z")

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I thought NCSA telnet got dropped in favor of [Better Telnet](http://www.cstone.net/~rbraun/mac/telnet/). What the heck, it’s free.

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**Author:** ![Geek\_Mecha](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/ecae2f/32.png) [@Geek\_Mecha](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Geek_Mecha)\
**Post date:** [April 3, 2002, 1:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/telnet-equiv-for-mac/101511/4 "2002-04-03T01:33:05Z")

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When I had telnet access to my university account, I used BetterTelnet. It’s based on NSCA Telnet, which was a darn fine app to begin with.

You can download it here: [http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=640&db=mac](http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=640&db=mac)

I’m not sure if it works on OS 8, because I ran it on my iMac, which has OS 9. OS versions before OS X lacked the Terminal feature **Kirkland 1244** spoke of (which makes sense as OS X is the first Unix-based Mac OS).