what about irc and ircd?
is irc available? 
oh yes, and thanks to everyone who's helped so far. it's been very useful
the mac's actually behaving very well now. i get some funny error with
pine when it quits, it complains about something that writes off the edge
of the screen. the debug file is very long, but mentions in the head that
it is missing certain settigns files and directories. i'm not too sure
what to do with them. if you know what i'm talking about, all suggestions
welcome :-)

_________________________________________________________________________
John Ostrowick
Computer Science Department, University of the Witwatersrand
1 Jan Smuts Ave, Johannesburg, South Africa. 1st Floor, Senate House 1012
Phone: +27 (011) 716-3783
jon@cs.wits.ac.za or jon@macenroe.cs.wits.ac.za or jon@is.co.za
My web page is on my server's: http://macenroe.cs.wits.ac.za/
My ftp site: ftp://macenroe.cs.wits.ac.za/public partition/
My listserv: subscr@macenroe.cs.wits.ac.za (any message with a body)