I think I might have pasted the wrong worksheet the last time, this one is the one I am using (edited original post with code tags too).
I will try the strict and diag settings too.
What happens is the socket connects and the response from the server is dumped to screen. I then input my response and although I can see the <STIND> appear on the remote servers log the response from the server never appears on the perl app, if you know what I mean.