MSAC Student Guide to IRC
 Now that you have an Internet account, where can you go on campus to 
use it?
      1. The Student Services Center at the bottom level of Building 
9. Enter the student
services building as if you were walking to it from class (from the 
east); follow the hall, and
take the very last hallways to your right (before the bathrooms and 
through a white door); then
enter the very first room to your right. This room is open Mondays 
through Thursdays 7:30
a.m. to 8:00 p.m, and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.
      2. The library at the upper level of building 6 on the 
circulations side. Some terminals
are used for card catalogs only, so look for terminals which have 
signs that are Internet
designated (or just ask someone). The library is open Mondays through 
Fridays from 7:30 a.m.
to 9:30 p.m., and Fridays from 7:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. 
      If you are new to the Internet, I would suggest going to 
Building 9. Help is available for
you there.

 I have an open terminal... what next?
      You will know that you are at an Internet terminal when you see 
the Mt. SAC twin
mountain logo. On the bottom half of the screen, the computer will 
ask for your:

      USERID

      PASSWORD

      There are two different types of accounts that students can use,
 and each type has a
different Userid. Most of you will be using an PHL or SOC account; 
you can tell if this is so
if these letters are part of your Userid. Besides these accounts, 
there are student accounts. Here
are examples of each kind of account.
      A PHL or SOC Userid will look like this: 6PHL1001 or 6SOC0000
      A student account Userid will look like this: 1BAJ2027
      After you enter your Userid and password into the computer, you 
will get one of two
different screens. You will either get a screen that just say Ready 
or if you have e-mail (that is,
electronic mail), you will be sent directly to your e-mail in-basket 
(which is like your mailbox). 
      A Ready prompt means that the computer is waiting for a command 
from you that will
tell it what operation you wish to use. Usually, though, you will be 
sent to your in-basket which
looks like this:
                                Mail In-Basket

      From              Date        Subject     Size
      Denise            1/16/96     Hello 10

 ------------------------------------------------

 How do I change my password?
      After you log on for the first time, you will want to change 
your password from that
strange one you were given to something more personal, memorable, and 
secure. To change
your password, exit all other applications (press PF3 if in in-
basket) and type in dirm pw. Type
in your new password and press Enter; then type in your new password 
again to verify it and
press Enter; finally, type in your old password and press Enter. Once 
your password has been
officially changed, it will say so on your screen.


                                    E-MAIL

      E-mail, or electronic mail, is very simple to do. Your first 
assignment was to e-mail
Dave just to let him know that your Userid and password is working. 
To send a message to
Dave, Paul, Beth, or anyone else, here is what you do. To e-mail Dave,
 for example, all you
need to is type ricemail dlane when you're at the screen with the 
Ready prompt, or type
ricemail dlane at the command line at the very bottom of your e-mail 
in-basket. 
      The e-mail screen will then look like this:

      To read your mail press 

      To send mail type address and press 

      To Quit type Q and press 

      In the status area at the bottom right corner of the screen it 
will say More... When you
see this, press Enter and the next screen will appear looking like 
this:

      Enter Name or Enter subject

      The next screen you will see will be your actual e-mail screen. 
This is where you will
write the letter itself. At the tope of this screen you will see:

                        Sending Mail                  lines 1 to 15 
of 25
 Date:            Wednesday 17 Jan 96           7:45:30 PST

 From             Beth James 

 Organization     Mt. San Antonio College

 To               Dave Lane 

_______________________________________________________
-------------------------------------------------------



-------------------------------------------------------

F1=Help     F2=Add Line       F3=Quit     F4=Add Page F5=Send 
F6=Switch

F7=Backwards      F8=Forward        F9=Delete Line    F12=Cancel

=====> (This is the command line)
      After you have finished writing your letter, press PF5 (located 
at the top of your
keyboard) to send the message. You will now get a prompt asking you 
if you are sure that you
want to send the message; press PF5 again to confirm that you want 
the letter sent. 
      You will get a screen with the words "Mail sent to" and 
whatever e-mail address you
mailed your letter to. On the bottom right of your screen (the status 
area) you will see
Holding... Press the Clear button and you will receive a message that 
confirms that the person
received the message you just sent. Press Clear again to get back to 
your e-mail in-basket.
      Sometimes when you are writing a letter you'll run out of 
screen space. To get more
room to continue writing your letter, there are two things you can do.
 One way to make more
room is press PF2 to more lines one by one. If you press PF4 however, 
you will add a whole
page of room; this works well if you are sending long e-mails. The 
functions of all these
function keys will be described at the end of this section.

 Someone sent me mail. How do I read it?
      Reading your e-mail is as easy as sending your mail. You'll 
always know when you have
mail because you will be sent directly to your in-basket right after 
you logon. If you have more
than one screen of mail, you will be sent to the screen that your new 
mail is on. This is what
a screen with new mail looks like:

                                 Mail Inbasket

>From              Date        Subject                 Size

Tammi             1/16/96     No Subject              23

Denise Rand       1/17/96 >   Hi there!               10

Greg Horn         1/17/96 >   Good morning            17

      To read an e-mail that has been sent to you, move the cursor to 
the row that lists the mail
that you want to read. Press PF2 to open and read the message. To see 
if a mail is new and
unread, look between the Date and Subject columns. If there is a > 
symbol there, this means
that the mail is new and that it has not been read. Another important 
symbol is a * in the same
area. This symbol means that you have been sent a reply to a message 
you previously sent this
person. A piece of mail with no symbol between the Date and Subject 
columns means that it is
a message that you have already read.
      An easy way to write back to someone who has sent you mail is 
to use the reply feature.
To reply to a message you've been sent, move your cursor to that 
message and press PF5; the
Sending Mail screen will then appear. Then just write your message as 
you normally would, and
the letter will automatically go to that person you are replying to.
      To delete a message, move your cursor to the message that you 
want to get rid of and
press PF. A - symbol will then appear between the Date and Subject 
columns marking that the
message will be discarded.
      As you are reading your e-mail, your screen may run out of room.
 If this should happen,
press PF8. This moves your screen forward and allows you to continue 
reading your mail; it's
the equivalent of turning a page.
      
                            E-Mail Troubleshooting

      Not much can go wrong in e-mail, but sometimes things do happen.
 You help prevent
mistakes by keeping an eye on the status area on the bottom right 
hand corner. If there is a
message there saying Holding... or More..., just press the Clear 
button. Another problem that
sometimes happens is when you give the computer too many commands at 
once. If this happens,
you will see an X on the bottom left corner. To get rid of the X you 
will need to press the Reset
button near the lower left corner of your keyboard.
      Another problem that sometimes occurs is if you hit the Dup 
button that is right above
the Shift key on the right side of the keyboard. The Dup key is, for 
some unknown reason,
death to an e-mail. If you happen to do this accidentally, press 
Reset or Clear and then Enter
to get back to your sending mail screen. All data will be lost on the 
letter you were working on,
and you'll have to start over. This is has happened to me many times 
and I still have not found
a way to save my mail.
      If you ever get confused, press PF1, the help menu. It will 
tell you what to do to fix
something. If you do not see the help menu, you can just type in Help 
and the computer will
list commands and options for you. Another good way to find help is 
to ask someone around
you. Remember that experience is the best teacher, and don't be 
afraid to ask; we all were new
to the internet at one time or another, and probably had the same 
questions that you have.


                        More Advanced E-Mail Operations

      After you have become an e-mail pro and have more than 200 e-
mails in your basket,
you may want to keep something call a Mailbook. Mailbooks are files 
that hold the letters you
send back and forth with just one person. What you have are little 
files for each person's e-mail
messages. To make these, you use the file system called Names. To do 
this, types names on the
command line like this:

====> Names



      You will be sent to a screen that looks like this:

====> Names (mail panel)                        File 1baj2027 Names

Nickname                                  Notebook

User id

Node

                                    Name

                                    Phone

                                    Address


PF1 Help    F2 Add      F3 Quit     F4 Clear    F5 Find     F6 
Change

F7 PrevNick F8 NextNick F9 Delete F10 PrevScrn F11 NextScrn

      Once you are there, follow the directions on the screen and 
enter the person's name on
the Nickname, Notebook, and Name line. On the Userid line, put their 
e-mail address
(everything that is before the @ symbol). On the line for the Node, 
put everything that is after
the @ symbol. Do not put the @ symbol anywhere here, though; the 
computer will add it
automatically. You can disregard the rest of the screen.
      After you have entered the information, you will want to add 
the name to the file by
pressing the PF2 key. You will have to do this for each individual 
file. After you have added
a names files for a person, place their mail in the mailbook by 
opening up mail from a person
who you have a mailbook for. On the command line, save the name of 
the mailbook in which
you wish to save the mail. Here is an example:

====> Save Denise

      I have now saved a piece of mail that Denise sent me in a 
Mailbook called Denise. You
can also look at your mailbooks by doing the following on the command 
line:

====> Mailbook Denise

      You will then be transported to a screen that will look like an 
e-mail inbasket, yet it will
have just the mail that you have sent to this person and which this 
person has sent to you. You
can get a list of all your mailbooks by doing this on the command 
line:

====> Mailbook

      You will get a screen that looks like this:

The Following 8 files match your specification *Notebook*

Cmd         Filename          Fm    Format      Records     Blocks    
  Date

            Denise      Notebook    AO    V     879079      3453      
  1/17/96

      To open up a mailbook from this screen, move the cursor to the 
book you wish to open.
Press PF10 and you will then be sent to your mailbook inbasket, just 
as you are sent there when
you type mailbook and the name on the command line. Another thing 
that you can do when you
have made a mailbook is send them mail without having to type their 
address anymore on the
command line or on the ricemail screen. You can just type in mail and 
the person's name, and
then you will be sent right to the sending mail screen without having 
to type in their name.


                              Forwarding E-Mail 

      Say you have a story or joke to tell more than one person, or a 
letter you wish to send
to many people. How do you do this? You can this by forwarding the 
mail. Forwarding mail
is as easy as writing and reading mail. To Forward e-mail, simply 
press Alt and PF13 at the
same time. After you have opened the mail that you wish to send, you 
will be sent to a screen
that will ask you to enter e-mail addresses. You can put about three 
addresses on a single line,
or, if you are sending mail to people you have mailbooks for, simply 
type in the persons' names.
After this is done, press Enter and you will be allowed to add a 
message at the top of the e-mail
message you are forwarding. Then just send the message as you 
normally would (PF5). 
      These are some operations that might come in handy. If you have 
problems with one of
these advanced operations or would like me to help set you up your 
Names and Mailbooks, just
e-mail me.


                               Suspending E-Mail

      There will be times when you will start an e-mail and will not 
be able to finish it, or
you'll want to add something to it at another time and send the mail 
later. There is a way that
you do this called suspending e-mail. Simply type suspend at the 
command line and your mail
will be saved. To get back to this saved message, go to the command 
line and type resume and
the e-mail address for the person to whom you are writing.

====> Suspend

====> Resume 1baj2027 mail

      I hope that this has helped you better understand how e-mail 
works and what you can do
with it.


                     The Function Keys and what they do...

>From the E-Mail Inbasket...

 PF1  Help  Describes options and tells you which commands do what
 PF2  Open  Opens up the mail that the cursor is pointing to
 PF3  Quit  Gets you out of e-mail and to your Ready screen
 PF5  Reply Allows you to reply to a message where your cursor is 
located
 PF7  Back  Allows you to scroll mail backwards
 PF8  Forward Allows you to scroll mail forwards
 PF9  Delete Deletes the e-mail where the cursor is located
 PF10 Menu Bar Allows you to go to the pull-down menu at the top of 
the screen
 PF11 Save Allows you to save mail in preset mailbooks
 PF12 Cancel Lets you cancel your mail and return to Ready screen


>From the E-mail Sending screen...

 PF1  Help  Describes options and tells you which commands do what
 PF2 Add Line Adds one line to the mail space you're writing in
 PF3 Quit Gets you out of mail and does not send the message
 PF4 Add Page Allows you to add a page of space to the message you're 
writing
 PF5 Send Sends the message you've written
 PF6 Switch Allows you to look at the letter that you're replying to 
(press it again to get back
            to your message)
 PF7 Back Scrolls your screen backwards
 PF8 Forward Scrolls your screen forwards
 PF9 Delete Deletes a line wherever your cursor is located
 PF10 Menu Bar Allows you to go to the pull-down menu at the top of 
the screen
 PF12 Cancel Cancels the message you were going to send



                               Newsgroups or NNR

      Another feature of the Internet is the newsgroups. This is an 
area where you can find
information and even add what you think. Newsgroups are collections 
of articles posted on the
Internet. To access a list of newsgroups, type nnr from the main 
command line once you are
out of all other operations. This means you have to be at the Ready 
screen to start nnr. 

Ready; nnr

      There is a problem with doing nnr this way, as it takes about 
10 minutes or more to
download all the information. A faster way to access newsgroups is to 
type in a specific
newsgroup. If you wait and get the complete list of newsgroups, 
though, you will get a screen
that looks like this:

Newsgroups

Full List of groups

ab          at
adsp        att
alc         au
alt         be

      What you will want to do is move your cursor to the one that 
says alt. "Alt" stands for
"alternative," and this is a popular place where there are a variety 
of topics such as religion,
politics, music, art, television, and many others. You can choose 
this category by pressing PF2
on the screen shown above. Then you will see a listing of all the Alt 
topics alphabetically. Scroll
through this list using your PF7 and PF8 keys to find a subject you 
like.
      After you have found a topic that you wish to explore, press 
PF4. This screen will show
you a list of available articles with their titles, allowing you to 
choose the articles you wish to
read. To read an article, move your cursor to the article and press 
PF2.
      You can also write your own article and have it added to a 
newsgroup. But be warned;
there is something out there called "flaming." The means being 
disrespectful towards others.
Please do not flame other people and try not to let it bother you if 
someone else flames you.

                        Posting on the NNR (Newsgroups)

      The first thing that you want to do to post is to enter the 
newsgroup that you wish to post
to. You want to find the article that you want to respond to. After 
you have found the article
you want, follow this order:
      -press PF5 to get into the reply screen
      -press PF9 to post the message
      -press PF5 to edit and write the reply
      -press PF8 to get to the bottom of the document you are 
replying to
      -press PF9 to delete all or part of the document that you are 
responding to. You will now
need to go to where it says ***End of Page***. Next you will need to 
move your cursor above
this.
      -press PF2 to add a line and continue to press this until you 
have enough room to write
your letter. After writing your letter...
      -press PF5 to save the letter you wrote
      -press PF6 to send the letter to the nnr newsgroup and to the e-
mail of the original
document writer

      After that, you will need to press the Clear button a few times 
to clear the screen pf
information about sending into the mail pool. After you get back to 
the header screen, you will
need to press PF3 to quit. This is the only option; after doing this, 
you will return to the original
document.



                           The World Wide Web or WWW

      The Web is a wonderland of information that is available in two 
forms and is a feast for
our senses. In the Web, we get both text and graphics (but our school 
does not have graphics
cards in most computers yet). Experiencing the Web from our school 
accounts is a little boring
because all we can see is text, but it's still well worth a look. To 
get on the Web, all you need
to do at the main command is type www:

Ready; www

      You will then be on school's Web page. Here there is a history 
of the school and a list
of campus events. There are also links to other places on the Web, 
such as other schools and
other places where you can find out other information. As you may 
have seen, every company
seems to have their own www address. Their addresses tend to look 
like this (which is Dave's
Web address):

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~dlane 

      The above is a Web address or URL. If you have a URL and want 
to look at a Web
page, all you do after you have connected to school's web page is 
press PF5, enter the address
of where you want to go, and then press Enter. If you do not know 
where to go, you can press
PF11 and you will get a Hot List. This is a list of Web sites that 
school thinks you may enjoy.
There is another way to find out what is on the Web, though. On the 
school's web page there
is a link that is called Other Resources; tab down to it and press 
Enter. You will then get a
listing of other places. Tab down to the one that says Yahoo and then 
press Enter. Yahoo is like
a Web directory that lists a variety of categories for the Web and 
has all the links you need. If
you have never been on the Web before, I would start with Yahoo. I 
hope you have fun
exploring the Web.


                             Beth's final notes...

      I would like to thank a few people who have helped me so much 
with this. First, I would
like to thank Dave Lane for asking me to write this guide for his 
class and asking me to be his
Internet teaching assistant. I would like to thank Denise Rand for 
showing me how to use the
Internet and being patient while it took me two months to figure it 
all out. A special thanks to
Linda Suh who has spent countless hours on IRC researching servers 
and how the system works;
and to Greg Horn who always there in the lab to help me, and who 
spent time trying to and
finally succeeding at posting on the NNR and for exploring the www 
with me. As for Ingrid
(Olivegirl), thanks for being there for me as a good friend and 
keeping me sane. Lastly, a big
thanks to Paul O'Brien for listening and motivating me with his 
understanding words of
encouragement.

                                IRC: Internet Relay Chat

       IRC, or chat rooms, are places where you can go and "talk" 
with other people. There
are plenty of people waiting to make friends with you and chat about 
various topics. In the chat
rooms, subjects range from the interesting and thought-provoking to 
the boring and the inane.
If you find this area of the Internet to your liking and want to try 
it out, here are some directions
on how to use it.

       WARNING: IRC is unrestricted, and anything goes in the chat 
rooms. There will be
discussions about topics that some people may find offensive and 
objectionable. IRC may also
become quite habit-forming and addictive, so be forewarned.


                                 How to get into the IRC

       To get into the chat rooms, you must exit all other 
applications such as e-mail. Go to the
Ready; prompt screen. Once you are this screen, you will have to 
think of a name for yourself.
It can be up to 9 letters long and you can change it each time. 
Unlike the other on-line services,
no one on the Internet owns a nickname. Once you have a nickname for 
yourself, you will need
to connect to a server. Servers are programs that operate the systems.
 Servers are created and
used by users to connect into IRC. You can think of them as a train 
car. A train is made up of
many cars. They are all connected, and you may go in between these 
different train cars to talk
to other people. You cannot talk to those people without getting on 
that train. There are many
servers out there on the Internet, some for a variety of different 
purposes. Think of one train
car as one server. You MUST get on that train car to talk those 
people on that train.

       To connect to an IRC server you type in:

       irc  

       It is best to try and connect to a server that is close to 
your location, or one that will not
give you lag (slowness). If you want to talk to people who live in 
Europe, it is best to go onto
a European server. Now you are ready to into the world of IRC.

       nickname            server       message
irc    Bethannie           irc.sdsc.edu floating in cyberspace

       This is an example of what the nickname and server commands 
look like together. After
you add your server, you can put a message behind your name by simply 
typing a short quote
after leaving a space behind the name of your server. After you have 
entered a nickname and
a server, you will see a screen that looks like this:


--------------------------------------------------------------
rx IRC2.0 - You are Bethannie (1baj2027@IBM.MTSAC.EDU)
Logging is off; Audible bells are off Quiet ignore is off
Time is displayed every 60 min
Connecting to sdsc.edu on port 6667
--------------------------------------------------------------

       The above example is what you see when you are connected to 
your server. The dashed
line is what we call the line of hope; the line means that the server 
has recognized you and that
you are being connected. Once connected, you will get about two 
screens worth of rules from
the server. As your screen fills up with the rules, look at your 
status area (in the bottom right
corner) and when it says More, press the Clear button.

                                     How to use IRC

       After you have been connected by your server and have gone 
through the rules, you need
to join a chat room, or see a list of rooms and channels. To look at 
a list of rooms, press the
slash key on the bottom right corner of the keyboard and type list:

/list

       This may take a long time, so a chat room list has been 
provided for you here; there are
also lists on each bank of computers in the lab in Building 9. 
       After you have found a place that seems interesting to you, 
you need to join that chat
room. This is done by typing slash, the number sign (Shift 3), and 
then the name of that
particular room. It should look something like this:

/join #mtsac

       The screen will say:

Bethannie    1baj2027@IBM.MTSAC.EDU joins #MTSAC

       There will then appear a list of all the nicknames of the 
people that are already in the
room. A typical conversation looks something like this:

 There are about 40 people in my math class can you believe 
that

 No really last semester there were so many people in my 
history class that some
of us had to sit ont he floor

***    Olivegirl parts #mtsac (P.S. Olivegirl can be found on AOL)

       To get out of a chat room, you type slash, part, the number 
sign, and then the name of
the channel you want to leave.

/part #mtsac

       To talk to someone in private so that what you say does not go 
out into the whole room,
send what is called a message. To do this, type slash, the letter M, 
a space, and then the
nickname of the person you want to talk to.

/m Lexi hello what's up

       When you receive a message from someone else, their name 
appears between two stars
and looks like this:

*Bethannie* what are you doing for lunch?

       The message from Bethannie is only seen on your screen and no 
one else's. To answer
the message, type slash and the nick of the person.

/m Bethannie going out with Denise and Anita... why?

       Sometimes in the chat rooms you will want to do what is called 
an action, such as
dancing around the room or sitting on a virtual chair, or anything 
you like. In an environment
where you want everyone in the room to see, use the slash command:

/em dances around the room

       This statement will appear on the screen as:

Bethannie dances around the room

       If you are in a private conversation and you want to perform 
an action, use the slash
describe command.

/describe lexi gives you a high five 

       The message would appear on Lexi's screen as one single star 
and the person to whom
you sent this action will see the message:

*Bethannie gives you a high five


       On IRC, you can get a list of all the people in your chat room 
by typing:

/who

       Another way to find a person is to search for their nickname. 
This is done by entering:

/who Bethannie

       After doing this, you will either get a response telling you 
the person's e-mail address
and the room they are in, if they are on, or you will get a message 
such as no such nick or
channel if they are not logged on.
       Yet another way to locate someone is to finger their account. 
When you do this, you
receive a message stating they are either not logged on, or it will 
tell you their terminal location.
To do this, type slash, exec finger, and then the person's e-mail 
address.

/exec finger ibaj2027@ibm.mtsac.edu

       You can also finger a whole site by knowing the name of the 
school. For Mt. Sac, you
type slash, and who @ibm.mtsac.edu. It will then list all the 
students on IRC at a given time.

/who @ibm.mtsac.edu

       If you want to find out who is logged on to the whole network, 
use slash finger like this:

/finger

       Some other helpful commands are /away; this means that you are 
stepping away from
the channel for a moment. Use this command and then enter a message 
after it, and it will show
that message to anyone who uses the /who command on you.

/away be right back

       After you have returned from being away, simply type /away 
without any message and
you will no longer be marked as away.

/away

       There is also a command that you can use if someone is 
bothering you on the Internet.
The command is /ignore; type this command, a space, and then the 
offender's nickname. They
will no longer be able to send you any messages.

/ignore 

       There are actually people on the IRC that are looking out for 
you. These people are
called channel ops, and they have @ symbols  next to their names in 
the channel room listings.
The powers they hold are not really that special, but they can remove 
and ban people from
rooms and set limits on how many people can be in a room. To become a 
channel op, you must
either be nice to the people who run the channel, or stay in one 
channel for a long time to earn
automatic ops. Along with channel ops, there are programs that keep 
channels open called Bots.
Think of these as watchdogs, as they are programs that allow channels 
to stay open when there
are no people in them. They are programmed by people to give ops if 
you give them a code
when you enter a room.


                            How to start your own chat room 

       There are times when you may just want to talk to one or two 
people, and don't want
to sit there online and send private messages. You can open up your 
own room and even gets
ops there. For example, you pick a name that you know is not already 
a room name and then
join that room; you have just made your own chat room. To make this 
room private, set your
channel modes by typing:

/mode # +snti

       This sets the channel so that you have to invite people to 
come to your channel, and the
room will not appear on the list of channels. To invite someone to a 
private channel, type
/invite. To answer an invitation from someone else, just enter 
/follow.


                                  List of ops commands

For each command, also enter /mode # + first.

b Bans nick from the channel
i            Makes channel by invitation only
n            No private messages to the channel will be allowed
             from people not on the channel
p            Makes channel so that users won't show up in /who
s            Makes channel secret so it won't show up on /list
t            Makes channel so that only ops can change channel's
             topic
o  Makes nickname a channel op
k  Removes user from channel


                                  List of IRC commands

/away        With a message, sets you as away
/away        Without a message, says that you've returned
/bye         Allows you to leave IRC
/describe    Followed by nickname, sends a private action
/em          Allows you to perform an action on a channel
/exec tell   Lets you talk to someone not on IRC, as long as you
             add their e-mail address
/follow      Lets you follow someone after they have invited you
             to a channel
/ignore      Lets you ignore a person
/invite      Invites a person to join a channel you're on
/j or /join  Lets you join a channel that you specify with
             #
/k           Lets those with ops status to remover a user from a
             room
/m or /msg   Sends a private message to any user online in your
             room or any other room
/notify      Allows you to make a list of nicknames, and the
             computer will tell you if that nickname is logged on
             or not
/part        Lets you leave a channel you are in
/query       Allows you to hold a private conversation with one
             person and not use the /m command. To start this,
             type /query and the nick of the person. To end a
             query, type /query
/quit        Ends your IRC time
/time        Shows you the time according to what server you are
             using
/topic       Lets channel ops change the topic of the channel
/w           Plus a nickname, allows you see who a nickname is
/who         Lets you see who is on a channel
/who         Plus a site, lets you see who is online at a
             particular location



                               IRC Chat Room Channels List

Regular Channels

#mtsac              #newbies            #new2irc      #irchelp
#friends            #fun                #hello        #!!hello!!
#music              #altmusic           #love         ##love
#romance            #tarot              #chatback     #chatline
#chatline2          #chattime           #chat         #newchat
#teenchat           #newfriends         #penpals      #25something
#friendly           #xfiles             #911          #AA
#movies             #bartender          #ircbar       #bobs_tavern
#realchat           #soccer             #hockey       #baseball
#basketball         #politics           #philosophy   #Disney
#anamaniacs         #30plus             #ufo          #heislord
#bible              #Mormon             #Islam        #catholic
#anne-rice          #vampyre            #vampire      #gothic
#industrial         #punk               #skate        #metal
#manson             #nin                #depeche      #cure
#smiths             #ska                #pearljam     #nirvana
#writers            #poetry             #joychat      #teenfriends
#teenroom           #42plus             #freenet      #chatzone
#beach              #hyper              #kids         #chaos
##                  #astrology          #beer         #rosegarden
#mk3                #ad&d

       There are many more chat rooms out there, so if you find some, 
let me know (ibaj2027)
and I will update the list.


                               City and Country chat rooms

#Vietnam            #basil        #Florida            #Chinese
#Taiwan             #francais     #vietfun            #Texas
#Amsterdam          #Portugal     #Sweden             #Chile
#Asian              #Peru         #Houston            #England
#sandiego           #Russian      #Rio                #Spain
#france2            #Tokyo        #espaina            #Mexico
#losangeles         #California   #Dutch              #Russia
#Montreal           #Europe       #Newark             #Moscow
#Filipino           #Malaysia     #Japan              #Siam
#Singapore          #Venezuela    #Denmark            #British
#Holland            #Argentina    #Finland            #Australia
#aussies            #brit