This is normal. When your PC enters power save or sleep mode, it shuts down power to most peripherals. If power is lost to the network card or modem, that will cause TERM or TinyTERM to disconnect. The solution is to adjust your computer’s power save settings.

When connecting via modem, TinyTERM fails with a Windows protection error. Sometimes the error doesn’t come up until you have connected, then started typing.

This is caused by a problem with the modem driver in Windows. Update the driver and the errors should stop.

PCs without serial ports are increasingly common. If you need to make a serial connection with one, you’ll need a device that adds a serial port to the system. USB adapters are the most common.

Once the drivers for the adapter are installed, you’ll see a new serial port on your system. Configure TERM or TinyTERM to use it as you would any other device.

Some versions of TinyTERM are not compatible with all such adapters. There is no patch in that case. You will need to upgrade TinyTERM instead.

CR 509, fixed in TinyTERM 4.52

TinyTERM Plus 4.10 and higher include the SSH connection type. TinyTERM 4.1x includes only SSH1. Version 4.20 and higher include SSH2 as well. An option to specify SSH2 only at connection was added in TinyTERM Plus 4.31. Public key authentication was added in TinyTERM Plus 4.42.

For help in configuring SSH connections, you can watch screencasts on configuring password authentication and configuring RSA authentication.

In TinyTERM 4.10, the SSH option is grayed out by default. This is due to export restrictions at the time Century Software, Inc., first released the product. You can add SSH by downloading and applying this patch. Download it to a temporary directory, then run it after TinyTERM Plus Edition is installed. It will also work for TinyTERM Thin Client Edition or TinyTERM Web Server Edition version 4.10.

If you have version 4.11 or higher and SSH is grayed out, you have TinyTERM, not TinyTERM Plus. TinyTERM does not include SSH, though TinyTERM Thin Client and TinyTERM Web Server do.

SSH2 is also available in TERM for SCO UNIX and TERM for Linux version 6.28 as a command-line option. The basic command is:

term -lssh:username@host.or.IP

Replace “username” with an actual username, and “host.or.IP” with the correct hostname or IP address.

Century Software, Inc., does not provide SSH daemons for host systems. Check sites such as www.openssh.com for daemons and source code.

CR 37, SSH
CR 144, SSH2
CR 205, RSA key authentication
CR 297, TERM 6.28
CR 481, SSH2 only

TinyTERM is incompatible with the HSP56 Micromodem, sometimes called the HSP Micro Modem 56, as shipped from most PC manufacturers. It will refuse to connect, or lock up when dialing that modem.

The problem is in the Windows modem driver. Updating that driver to the most current version will fix the problem.

CR 162

Sometimes your emulation display will have extraneous characters mixed in with readable text. You might also see a situation where none of the characters are readable.

When you connect using a modem or direct serial cable, but none of the characters are readable, this always means the communication settings are off. Check for the correct baud rate, word length, parity and stop bits, based on the host port configuration. Change the settings in TERM or TinyTERM to match.

If all the settings match, then there is an incompatibility between the two modems. If possible, update the drivers for both. Otherwise, one or both will need to be replaced.

If the login prompt comes up correctly, but not everything is readable after you log in, this means the terminal emulation type is set wrong. Usually there will be extra nonsense characters between the correct ones. You may also have alignment problems with text.

Check your .profile or equivalent on the host for the correct terminal type. If it’s not there, check the host application’s documentation for the correct emulation. Once that’s set properly, the display will be correct.

When connecting over the Internet with a telnet or SSH connection, occasionally temporary network drops happen. TinyTERM can normally recover from these if you don’t type while the network is down. However, since it’s hard to tell that the network connection was temporarily lost until you type something, you’ll normally notice the failure when TinyTERM appears to lock up.

It has not actually locked. Instead, it has lost the network connection it had to the server. In most cases the menus will work normally, and you can exit TinyTERM gracefully.

Some versions of TinyTERM do not handle the connections as well. In those cases, the only thing you can do is close TinyTERM from the Task Manager. Typing Ctrl-Alt-Delete will bring that up in any version of Windows.

CR 126, disconnect handling improved in TinyTERM 4.10.
CR 159, intermediary system disconnects

This error usually means the specified serial port does not exist on the system. If the serial port physically exists, check to make sure the drivers are loaded. It’s possible the operating system doesn’t recognize the port. That might also indicate a hardware problem in the port itself.

This error comes from invalid port binding in the rlogin connection type. TinyTERM versions 4.00-4.13 will dynamically assign a port, but it is usually out of range for the rlogin protocol.

CR 127, fixed in TinyTERM 4.20.

When connecting to a serial device or modem, this message means another application is using the same port. This can include mouse drivers, fax software, or another terminal emulation program. There are more programs that might be using a serial port, but these are the most common.

If nothing else should be using the specified port, close all your applications and reboot your PC. If that does not clear up the problem, you’ll need to check the active processes on the PC, looking for those that might be accessing serial ports.