IRC or iChat?

IRC is alot better than iChat/AIM not everyone uses iChat/AIM. i dont use iChat i like irc better you can do more in irc than you can in iChat/AIM. IRC is a chat room that every one can talk with each other and DCC/transfer files if they are missing one that they need to get up and running

I still miss Bob Lafleur's Telnet-based room. Didn't require any special software to use, and people were even able to chat using some vintage hardware (I remember someone once saying they were using a IIe in there).

I think it would be pretty cool to have a telnet based bbs system of some sort, as most system have a builtin telnet client and it would be available anywhere.

I have to agree that moving to iChat is not going to be a good solution. IRC programs will run on many computers, and it's quite possible to connect to IRC via a telnet client. I'll illustrate how:

Run telnet with the proper options:
telnet irc.freenode.net 6667
Where irc.freenode.net is the server and 6667 is the port.
Something like this should come up:
NOTICE AUTH :*** Looking up your hostname...
NOTICE AUTH :*** Found your hostname, welcome back
NOTICE AUTH :*** Checking ident
NOTICE AUTH :*** No identd (auth) response

After that, type NICK [the nick you want]
Note that the name you select can't have spaces and doesn't need to be surrounded by the brackets.
Then type:
USER 2 * : [name]
The [name] doesn't have to be the same as your nickname, and it doesn't have to have brackets either.

After that, a lot of gibberish will flow by. You should type:
JOIN #applefritter
And a bit more gibberish will flow by.
To send a message to the channel, type:
PRIVMSG :[your message]
The brackets are, once again, not needed, but the colin is needed.
And to quit, just type:
QUIT

It's not the most elegant solution, but it is entirely possible. My source for the commands outlined is http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/1963 .

I have a very simple, kinda buggy, IRC client i have written. It's still in beta, but, i can compile for 68k macs, or PPC os 7/8/9 or X

A while back I remember a telnet based chat program called Chat 2.1 which ran on the macintosh and ran a chat server you could use by telnetting into it, it even had a configurable password and some other features, even rooms!
For a test (it was shareware IIRC), I set up a network in my house and we had a load of macs connectiong to it running on a IIsi with 9MB RAM running off 2 floppy disks (that was an interesting setup, the HD died so I managed to make it boot the system file and MacTCP control panels located on a 1.44MB floppy disk but instead of the finder I had an alias, named Finder, to the chat program located on the second disk (800k) in the external drive, it worked fine and ran headless (with a vga adaptor) during the test preiod). the IIsi ran great until the PSU started to smell of burning, so I stopped using it. This was all using good old CapNet (home made localtalk connectors, search http://www.jagshouse.com). Also it wasn't really all that slow, on a fairly modern mac running online it should be fine, it is only for classic though, but it would be great to have the Applefritter chat hosted on a vintage mac. A Quadra 840AV with a 10/100BaseT Asante ethernet card running System 7.5.5/7.6.1 or even 8.1 would make an ideal server for it!

The program should be avaliable from some download sites on the web, I seem to remember finding it with a little googling. If not, I'm sure it's on one of my (UK) macworld CDs, definatly between 1997 and 1999 (if that helps).

I still miss Bob Lafleur's Telnet-based room. Didn't require any special software to use, and people were even able to chat using some vintage hardware (I remember someone once saying they were using a IIe in there).

Howabout a telnet BBS with an IRC client? (Like BitchX or something) That way we get the best of both worlds.

Also it's something I'd been keen to run

I posted instructions on accessing IRC via telnet, so that would be somewhat pointless in my opinion.

Hello everyone. I was curious about the irc channel, and followed
the telnet instructions above... took a bit of experimenting to get
it right... but I finally get on the channel... and I am
promptly banned. I've sent some messages to the operator, who seems
non-responsive. I sent a couple messages to members here asking
them to put in a word for me, as I really don't know what I'm
doing...
Anyway, I think the operator was a little quick on the draw to ban
me... thinking I was a bot...(I don't feel like a bot) I was still trying to figure out
how to message back. Can someone please ask him to unban me?

Hello everyone. I was curious about the irc channel, and followed
the telnet instructions above... took a bit of experimenting to get
it right... but I finally get on the channel... and I am
promptly banned. I've sent some messages to the operator, who seems
non-responsive. I sent a couple messages to members here asking
them to put in a word for me, as I really don't know what I'm
doing...
Anyway, I think the operator was a little quick on the draw to ban
me... thinking I was a bot...(I don't feel like a bot) I was still trying to figure out
how to message back. Can someone please ask him to unban me?

As soon as an op logs in I'll have him remove the ban. Since you didn't speak for about 5 minutes we thought maybe you were a bot, but that was our mistake. Sorry for the misunderstanding.

I'm MattBaer on the channel by the way.

SENSORGHOST, i am so sorry... there was a bot by the same name circulating on another network that i frequent, and when you logged in and were completly silent for a while, i put 2 and 2 together and apperently came up with 5. Again , i am very sorry about the misunderstanding, and i want to make it clear that no disrespect was ment, and you are more than welcome to join in the conversation in #applefritter.