Nyan Cat Telnet Server

Due to bandwidth limitations, the Nyancat telnet server has been shut down.



If you are interested in hosting an official mirror, please let me known on Twitter.

This is an animated, color, ANSI-text telnet server that renders a loop of the Nyan Cat / Poptart Cat animation. (Mirrors)

This is free and open-source software, released under the terms of the NCSA/UIUC license and is available on github (klange). You may be able to find the nyancat package in your distribution repositories. If you like my work and want to listen to my inane social media postings, follow me on Twitter (@_klange). Also consider checking out this video of Nyan Cat on an actual VT220.

Open up a supported terminal^ and run:

telnet nyancat.dakko.us

Or you can click here on some browsers.

Buy this CD!

Don't see poptart cat? Check the terminal support notices and caveats below.



Screenshot from gnome-terminal

In addition to telnet, netcat may also work. Check which version of netcat you're using and note that you can't tell netcat what terminal to report so you will always get "ansi" mode (non-xterm-256-color, uses "10X" for bright backgrounds).

BSD nc -v nyancat.dakko.us 23

GNU nc -T nyancat.dakko.us 23

Supported Terminals

Should work on all of the following (assuming at least an 80x24 terminal):

xterm

Gnome Terminal

Konsole

PuTTY

Linux framebuffers (software, run as is; hardware terminals use TERM=fallback telnet nyancat.dakko.us )

(software, run as is; hardware terminals use ) iSSH

ConnectBot

urxvt

rxvt

Terminal.app on 10.7 (10.6 and before, run TERM=ansi telnet nyancat.dakko.us )

on 10.7 (10.6 and before, run ) cygwin

Windows Terminal : Run as telnet -t vtnt nyancat.dakko.us

: Run as VT220 with TERM=vt220 telnet nyancat.dakko.us

with Shell in a Box (web terminal) with TERM=linux telnet nyancat.dakko.us

Troubleshooting

If you get bad output

If you are using a modern terminal which reports itself as xterm or similar and you don't see Nyan Cat, try:

TERM=ansi telnet nyancat.dakko.us

If everything else fails and you know your terminal supports at least standard ANSI escapes (color), try:

TERM=fallback telnet nyancat.dakko.us

If that gets the colors right, but you don't support unicode, try one of the following:

TERM=linux telnet nyancat.dakko.us # For background-only, prints spaces TERM=vtnt telnet nyancat.dakko.us # Foreground, uses extended ASCII block characters

If you are on Windows and using the native terminal, try this:

telnet -t vtnt nyancat.dakko.us

If the server isn't responding

Due to bandwidth limitations, the Nyancat telnet server has been shut down.



If you are interested in hosting an official mirror, please let me known on Twitter.

Shoot me an email: langek (A) acm (D) org

Or let me known on Twitter: @_klange

The server is set up to run with inetd and should be fairly stable by now, but if something does happen, let me know and I'll try to bring everything back online.

Notes

The server is written in C and runs with inetd. It does not make use of ncurses or other terminal libraries, but rather writes raw ANSI escape sequences after being given a terminal type, which telnet passes as part of its handshake. It was originally written for my personal operating system.

This server is a DigitalOcean droplet.

If your connection is lost during a successful run, it's probably because I restarted the server.

References

The Nyan Cat animation was originally made by prguitarman.

Development

As stated previously, code is up on Github at klange/nyancat. I am accepting changes if they are worthwhile and improve the overall experience.

The application behind the telnet server was originall written for my toy OS. I was presented with the idea of making it a telnet server by friend and colleague Mike Lynn. It took about an hour of work to set up the animation to run at the right size (80x24), work on various terminals, and execute from a telnet connection.

Mirrors

There are currently no known operating mirrors. There used to be a few, but they've all disappeared. Here's a list of domains that used to host telnet nyancat:

miku.acm.uiuc.edu

nyan.howes.net.nz

thefinn93.com

baud.org.uk

ebal.ee 666

th3ga.me

More Screenshots



Results when a terminal does not claim to be xterm.*.



Results for the fallback terminal type, ugly but effective.



Nyan Cat on an iPad with iSSH.



Newer fallback terminal output, a lot less ugly. Uses ASCII block characters.



Running under LXTerminal, the default terminal for LXDE.



Under Windows with telnet -t vtnt nyancat.dakko.us



That Nerd sent me this pic of XFCE4 Terminal under Arch.



iSSH on an iPod Touch via @B4rr0



Terminator on Linux Mint via @Peetz0r



ConnectBot on Android, also via @Peetz0r



Another Connectbot picture, via @anthonydfhogan



Mac OS 10.7 Terminal.app via @iamjoeodell



VT220, video



Updated VT220 palette for better color accuracy.



AJAXTerm under Opera, once more via @Peetz0r



Shell in a Box (web terminal) under Firefox



XTerm on an HP TouchPad via @nicktabick



iTerm on OS X Lion, via @macjunkie



Nyan Cat on Cathode, a retro terminal emulator for OS X, via @charliesome



Nyan Cat in the Apple ][ XScreenSaver, modified by @Peetz0r



An updated screenshot of Gnome Terminal with a timer.



A 386-40 (running DOS 5) and an IBM PCjr (from 1986, running DOS 3.3) both using mTCP to connect to the telnet server, via Mike Brutman (by email)



An entire room full of terminal Nyan Cats, celebrating Nyan Cat's birthday, via loraxx753 on reddit.



It even works in OS/2!



In froggey's hobby OS



From an old friend, on an Omate Truesmart.



From @compu_85, a Compaq Portable with mTCP!

I am collecting screenshots. If you would like to show me how nyancat looks under your setup, tweet me @_klange. I'm using gnome-terminal. If your setup isn't special I might not add your pics, sorry :( .

Copyright 2011-2017 K. Lange

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