turning off echoing of chars

hello, I am wanting to turn of screen echo for a login function or changing a password or similar things. I got the function to almost work, however it turns off the screen echo but it asks for the password, won't give you a chance to fill it in, and skips right on to the next prompt(and has the "non-echoing" for that stuff. incase this isn't clear which i assume alot of things which I guess i shouldnt ok, what i am doing: */ code snippit here */ socket_write($sock, "enter a username"); $name = socket_read($sock, 1024, PHP_NORMAL_READ); /* all good to this point */ socket_write($sock, "enter a password"); socket_write($sock, sprintf("%c%c%c",255,251,1)); $pwd = socket_read($sock, 1024, PHP_NORMAL_READ); /* will skip right on by to the next prompt and fill in $pwd with some of those non-alphanumeric chars */ and the next prompt is where the no-screen-echo finally works like it should I must be doing something incorrectly but, what? thanks matt