Our daily on-line chat sessions will be held using the Internet standard chat protocol, IRC (Internet Relay Chat). IRC is a client/server based system; you will need to download and install an IRC client on your computer and use it to connect to our chat server (just as you need to have Netscape or Internet Explorer installed to surf the Web, you'll need to have an IRC client to chat)..

There are many different IRC clients available for different platforms; if you don't already have an IRC client on your machine, we are recommend downloading and using the Global Chat client from Quarterdeck. Though it is meant for use with their proprietary chat server, the Global Chat client can also talk to regular IRC servers. Our server will work with any IRC client; Global Chat seems to be the easiest IRC client to set-up and learn.

The free Global Chat client can be downloaded from the Global Chat website, http://www.globalchat.com/ by agreeing to their license page at:

http://www.globalchat.com/download.html

Notice: There have been some reports of Quarterdeck's ftp server not finding the correct files. If you find that is the case, you can get a copy of Global Chat from our server:

• Macintosh
  
• Windows 95 or Windows NT
  
• Windows 3.1
  

  Unix clients:

• Solaris
  
• SunOS
  
• SGI
  

Once you have downloaded and installed the client for your particular platform, you'll need to know the following information when you start up the program:

nickname:	choose a name for yourself
server:	chat.webcast.gatech.edu
port:	6667
initial channel or room:	#public
channel/room password:	leave this blank

Once you connect to the server, it may take a few seconds before you see any text (so be patient!). Eventually you will connect and see some server welcome text. Then you are ready to chat!

A couple of commands you might want to know:

/join #public	takes you to the public chat room (in case you forgot to specify that when you logged in)
/quit	logs you off the chat server

Someone will be logged on all of the time to the server, but the official chat session doesn't start until 4:00 EST. You may, however, want to download and test the software before then.

If you have any questions or problems with getting the software, installing it, etc., email chat@webcast.gatech.edu.

We also have a step-by-step configuration guide for Global Chat for the Macintosh here.


Additional Information about IRC:
Though we are running a stand-alone IRC server, the Internet-wide IRC network can be an fun and exciting place to explore and meet others. A good place to start looking for additional information on IRC is Yahoo's IRC section:
    http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chat/IRC/
where you can find liks to commercial, freeware, and shareware IRC clients:
    http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chat/IRC/Software/
      and
    http://www.yahoo.com/Computers_and_Internet/Internet/Chat/IRC/Software/Clients_and_Servers/

The Yahoo IRC pages include links to many introductory pages about IRC, including:

http://www.cire.com/patrick/irc.html
http://deckard.mc.duke.edu/irchelp/new2irc.html
http://www.globalchat.com/help/irc/irc.html
http://www.irchelp.org/

... the last of which, IRChelp.org, has links to all kinds of information, along with pointers to client software needed to access IRC servers.