IRC & Sinclair ZX Spectrum Next - NextIRC version 1.2 - Internet Relay Chat - 8bit Retro Computer

Added: 2026-05-18

[00:00:00]Hi folks, TJ here. You know, one of the things that we do, some of us we do daily is IRC. You remember what IRC chat is? Internet relay chat.

[00:00:14]If you've been on the Nex, you know that we can now connect to bulletin boards.

[00:00:18]Well, we can also now connect to IRC.

[00:00:21]For some of you, that is a wonderful thing. I connect daily to mostly just a it's a secret group. It's a group that not anybody in the public can join. You had to be invited many years ago. I was invited like in 2012, 13, 14, something like that. It's an amigga group. Uh and I'm the lone Atarian in the group, lone Sinclair. Uh but yeah, I'm on there daily cuz I consider these guys good friends now because we actually meet up every so often at trade shows. Ammy West in California. So anyway, I do IRC every day. Now, for some of you, you know, you may just not enjoy the small text communication, instant chatting that we used to do, but for some of us, we're on there every day. So, having a capability to do it on a specky next is a wonderful addition. This program is in its infancy. It was just recently announced.

[00:01:19]is up to version 1.12 now, I think, or 1.2. I just tinkered with it a little bit to get my bearings straight. I'm not 100% up to speed on all of its functionality, but it did work. I did connect to the uh server that came pre-installed on here. There was one other person named Shrek, Shrek 128. And then I went ahead and joined an Amigga group, not the secret one that I've been talking about, but another one that I could publicly make a video on and you be able to see the data from. So you can at least see some users because the one that came canned on the application, there was only one person there. I don't know if it's a bot, a real person. So I thought I'd join one that may have a handful of people that we can do a list on and be able to see if I can remember how to do that. So why don't we wake up the screen? I'll then focus in and turn off the light and we'll kind of show you what IRC is about. Again, it is a internet relay chat. It is all text. It's not graphics.

[00:02:22]It's not like a bulletin board that you're seeing Anzy or Asky graphics or anything like that, but it's a method of communication. Our old form of texting each other, but we were on a channel that uh you could be invited to. You would sometimes have to get a password to use to get on. All those fun things.

[00:02:40]So, let's wake up my specky next and then let me focus in on the screen and then we'll show you what I've learned so far. My voice sounds a little horse today. I don't know why. That's weird.

[00:02:53]Okay, let me focus in on the screen, which I've done. And let me ski my body in here. And so, I went ahead and put the application in my home folder cuz I anticipate me using this daily. So browser and the name of the application is next IRC_1.2.NEX.

[00:03:14]So when you hit return, it comes up with this wonderful blue box. Next IRC version 1.2 by MB maniacs.

[00:03:25]Okay. Wi-Fi is already connected. So it detected that my Wi-Fi was up and running. Continue with current profile.

[00:03:32]So, when I had first logged in here, that was an option. Uh, but not the one that's listed there right now because I've created and added another server, but it came up with some IRC something something.net something something. Uh, and so you can select the current profile that you want to log in on. And then you can set up a new Wi-Fi. So, I don't need to set up a new Wi-Fi. Uh, my Wi-Fi is up and running. So, we're going to select one.

[00:03:59]And then IRC Nick. I'm going by TJ for right now. There's only certain amount of characters it could do. I tried Sinclair Society, but it only put in Sinclair's sock.

[00:04:10]I'm gonna start selling socks. Uh, sexy socks.

[00:04:15]Uh, and so use this nick, which I'm going to, or you can enter a new one.

[00:04:19]So, if you entered a new one, you could type in whatever your name is. Say you want to have different nicks for different groups, you can change it. So, in this case, I'm just going to go ahead and select number one.

[00:04:31]Right now it says call Nick. Nick. Okay.

[00:04:33]Call user. Uh DBG user. Okay. So I I didn't see this the last time I connected. Uh last time it took about a minute or so to connect up to a server.

[00:04:45]Uh and I'm not quite sure if it's connecting up. I I think we're going to have to wait it out because let me have So there's certain keys you're going to need to on the download page and I'll put the link down below where you can download this program. Uh it oh there we go. Uh it it see all that flickering.

[00:05:02]There's a It was connecting to the server and then it went ahead and connected and it memorizes the last group that I was in. Although it didn't remember my Amiggan's group, but it remembered the one I misspelled. Next DWV. I don't know what that is, but there's a next developer one. So if you use the arrow, so you can't see all the stuff behind it. You can look at it later. And I'll show you how to do that with the true video and in inverse video buttons. But let's go down and select nextdev and hit return. Uh now technically I'm in that group now where if I say hello everybody in that group should see it.

[00:05:44]And then right now I'm only seeing what I typed unless somebody else types. Now if I hit graph key on the keyboard it brings up users in nextdev. It's only me. I'm about TALKING TO MYSELF, WHICH I actually been doing lately. I've been talking to my like my mom. My mom used to have full conversations with herself.

[00:06:00]I'm finding I'm doing that now. Isn't it weird how we we take over from our parents? Hey TJ, how are you doing today? I'm doing mighty fine, TJ. How are you doing today? Well, I'm doing very good. So, yeah, you can hit that.

[00:06:11]And if you hit graph button again, it goes away. Now, here's the stuff that popped up as it connected to your server. If you want to scroll up, I think it's true video. See how it scrolls back up? You could scroll up and it says welcome to the amigaworld.net internet relay chat. It kind of wraps things around and it says I'm logged on as TJ. Every this is uh obviously everything is not fitting into a screen nice and perfect.

[00:06:36]I don't know if they can change the columns and what next is capable of doing to where some of this stuff like welcome doesn't go welcome at the very end too and then Amigga world everything's kind of it looks shifted around. I don't know if that's something that they can adjust on but this is how it's bringing it in from the server and it says I'm connected to the amigaworld.net network. You know why I might not see anybody else in that other group? I know why because I just connected to the amigaworld.net net IRC channel. There's thousands of gabil bajillions of IRC channels out there. So, the last one I connected to as TJ was the Amigor one, which doesn't have the next developer on there. So, I'm going to need to go back in and remember what the name of the server is. And then you have to actually type it in. Down here, you would type in the word, and I'm just going to type it in and then erase it. But you need to do symbol shift uh v which puts that slash and then you would have to type in server. I don't know any other servers off the top of my head so I'm not going to do it but server fff space and then normally most internet relay checks are on a 6667 uh I don't know what exactly that is.

[00:07:52]I'm my mind's skipping a beat. But then you would type in 6667, hit return, and then it would connect to that server.

[00:07:58]Since there is probably not a fff server, I'm going to go ahead and reu erase that. Uh but anyway, the other button that you can hit is graph. Uh right now I'm in nextdev, which is non-existent. I created it basically by me typing in one. I created it and no one's in there. So I need to go get back into Amigans. So I need to join Amiggan.

[00:08:19]So, let me get out of the screen and I'm going to do a symbol shift. Oh, no. Uh, extend mode J to bring up Oh, what's it with? Save channel. What's the one that uh that I need to do to Oh, here it is.

[00:08:33]Why did it bring up that other thing for Maybe it brings up that other thing first to let you select and then if you hit the return key and then let you type in a new one. I'm going to go into Amigans.

[00:08:44]Oh, gee. Uh, Eddie Gabs.

[00:08:48]I'm typing at an angle. Am uh and it's really dark in this room. Amigans. So, I know there's a channel called Amigans on this particular IRC server. Uh so, I'm going to type in Amigans and hit return.

[00:09:00]Now, when I did that last time, it took a good minute, two minutes to finally show some stuff because I'm in Amiggan or it's trying to go there. If I hit graph, oh, there they are. I don't know if it's memorizing the last one. Look, TJ, that's me. There's a a Wyatt.

[00:09:17]There's a delta. Then there's these other ones, the at symbol in front of them normally mean they are modded. Mods can bounce you. They can heckle at you and you can't do diddly squat. So all the ones uh uh that have this Amy bot.

[00:09:31]That's a bot of the group. Amy Russ Commander Data. I know a lot of these guys. Some of these are in my secret group. Uh but anyway, if I wanted to communicate with them now, they may not uh say anything. They may be lurking, but let me just hit the return key again. I'm going to get rid of Amy Bot.

[00:09:48]I don't want that in the front. I'm just going to say hello again.

[00:09:54]Hello again. That's not like the car's video. Hello. Hello again.

[00:10:00]You remember that song? Uh hello again.

[00:10:03]And then I hit return. And you'll notice TJ pops up there next to my text. Uh, so right now people if somebody's there and wants to communicate with me, they may chime in and say, "Hi, TJ." or whatever.

[00:10:14]And I'll just add to this uh making a video.

[00:10:23]Video v Oh god, I HIT SOMETHING WRONG. Oh no.

[00:10:28]DISCONNECT. NO, I DON'T WANT TO DISCONNECT. NO. To cancel some something I hit did that. So, a video uh making a a video return.

[00:10:39]Oh, there's an O there, too. Making a video. O.

[00:10:43]So, I'm I'm talking to myself right now, but supposedly when you hit the graph button in here, it's showing you users that are in here. Now, a lot of the groups, at least the main main group I'm in, there's some lurkers, but there's a handful of people that we communicate with, and we're always jabbing each other and doing stuff like that.

[00:11:00]Hopefully somebody pops in right now and at least says the word hello to where you know I'm live. If not, this will be kind of a boring video, but that's the the world of IRC. It's not like you can see what they're doing. You sit there and wait in surprise for somebody to say something and I'm going to just say someone say something. They may not be reading right now. Someone say something.

[00:11:26]Oh jeez, I'm really hacking some something.

[00:11:33]And we'll let this go a little bit longer. Uh, and we'll look at the other things. So down here, it does have a list. So if you hit edit key, it does bring up a window of remembered places.

[00:11:45]But remember, you need to hit be on the right server to have it do anything. But it's remembering my nextdev and amigans at this point. Next Dev is one I just made because if you type in a group and there's not a group with that already, you're creating a group technically on that name and I think other people can see it and then join. If you hit edit again, it goes away. If you hit uh the graph key, it brings up the user list of people that are in there. Now, I don't know if I can actually go down and do a direct comm. There's only certain things you could do in here. Now, I know Val, but he he probably he's drinking right now. He's boozing it up right now. If I hit that, I can send him a direct note and say hi.

[00:12:29]And then I believe only he should be seeing it. Or maybe not. Maybe what I'm doing is I'm highlighting his name to say hi to him and he's going to get a little tickle on his IRC app. And every app's different. Some of them will make a noise like somebody just mentioned your name. Other ones will do nothing.

[00:12:50]uh knowing Val, he's probably um playing around right now. Uh and he may pop in.

[00:12:55]But anyway, so you can if you bring up your your list, you can actually send a message to people. And I'm going to get that call and then I'm going to let see if anybody pops in and then we'll come back. So still no one talking. Uh so I did put shy people. I'm talking to myself as normal. Uh I then typed in the word slashlist thinking that maybe it would bring up a list of other channels on this server. uh where I could join up and maybe see other people. Uh but that didn't work. So it recommended to me though unknown command try slashhelp. So I did that and there there's slashjoin slpart slashnick slashnick is if you want to change your nickname your your name. So you do slashnick and then do a a new one. Uh there's slash message which maybe is a way to direct message somebody so other people don't see it.

[00:13:46]Not quite sure. I'll have to learn it.

[00:13:48]slashme. Normally when you do a slashme, it's that you're uh let's see if it if it shows it a little differently. So I'm going to do a slash me likes pizza.

[00:14:04]Now in most other IRC apps, at least if I think that's what it is, it would say my name TJ likes pizza instead of slashme. Let's see what it does. Yep, TJ likes pizza. See? So, if you want to come off as a uh you want to say my name likes this or whatever, you can do a slashme in there. Uh what's some other help things? Uh slashhelp.

[00:14:27]Still no one talking. But you lazy son of a Okay. Uh so slashquit. Apparently I can quit. The slashserver is there. So you can type in uh slashserver and then go to a different server uh and then join it. slashnames I think is the names of which is identical probably to what this graph button is doing that shows you who's in that group that's my guess uh slash next oh bot hello see there we go so you if you watch my video Zena uh bot but it's a bot at least it's saying hello but tech mage is actually somebody I know so technically I think it should be I'm going to say you are now in my video anyway. So, I let him know. Uh, so, uh, what other things do we have? So, slashn next, I'm not sure sure what that is.

[00:15:27]Uh, and slashprevious. Maybe it takes you between the next IRC and the previous one. I don't know. I'm going to have to tinker with those. The edit key is Windows. The graph uh is the users and uh ext which is the extended mode uh plus J brings up the channels. So uh he this is live. So I doubt uh his robot uh if Bill watches this later. I know Bill Bill is tech mage. I won't say his last name but it's Bill. Bill. Uh so anyway, thanks Bill for at least chiming in. Appreciate it. So I'm going to say thanks.

[00:16:06]Oops. Erase thx.

[00:16:10]Thanks.

[00:16:12]Now my video will be perfect.

[00:16:24]Thanks for saying something. Said Jesus, I can't type for What? I'm at an angle and it's dark in here and it's a black keyboard.

[00:16:37]It's not like lit up or something.

[00:16:39]Thanks for saying something. So cool. So anyway, TechMage said hello and I said uh you are now in a video and he says he he and now thanks for making my video perfect. So this is IRC. It is what it is. It is if people are chatty boxes that day, uh you'll get a lot of action.

[00:16:57]If they're drunk, you'll get some strange action. if they're quiet. Uh Val's typically actually a pretty quiet guy unless you get him started and then the man won't shut up. Hopefully he watches this. Uh but no, he's typically pretty reserved in the background. He'll come up with some oneliners every once in a while. He is in a group that actually these two are in in a group I am. So uh anyway, so that's what IRC chat is about. There is now an application that lets you do it on the specky next uh which is a wonderful thing. I love getting on IRC and days.

[00:17:30]That's why you just lurk. You sit in the room and you lurk and then every hour you come back and look and see if anybody said something. You can scroll up and down and see what you want to read. So if there was action in here, you could use the this to scroll up. I'm guessing if there was more info uh that you needed to read up and then uh in INV video would then take you back down.

[00:17:52]This is where you are going to type in your words of wisdom. And then when you're done, supposedly you could type in quit. I've never done that yet. So, uh, let's go ahead and try that. So, we're going to do a slash uh quit qi t uh and then hit return.

[00:18:16]And then TJ has quit. Okay, there we go.

[00:18:18]So, it does say that I quit. Now, if I hit graph, will it still show everybody that's in there? I don't know if this is bringing up a list of what it was, what it is still. Did I really quit?

[00:18:30]Ultimately, when you close out the of your next, you for surely quit, but I'm unsure right now if I've actually quit.

[00:18:36]But anyway, that's what IRC is about. It is what it is. Uh some people really love it. I and some of my closer internet friends do. We're on IRC daily.

[00:18:46]And at least I got uh Mr. Tech Mage to chime in and say something. So try it.

[00:18:51]Uh, so I will go back the the standard internet. I'll have to find out what the server was. I'll go back there. There was only one person named was it Shamrock Schleer. What was his name? Uh, uh, Slurpee started with an S. Shrek. Shrek. That's what it was. Go back and and I'll go in there and lurk. And then eventually, if you're like me and leave your next running for a while and and hang out in a room, you may not get instant stuff, but if you lurk in there, eventually somebody will join and say hello. And then you can start your discourse, your communication, your ribbing, your friendly ribbing, which is what I do pretty much every day and what my friends do to me. Although some of them are a little meaner than to me and supposedly I'm a little meaner than some of them some of the times. Uh you can hurt each other's feelings. So just remember you're on a internet thing and they can't see the expression on your face like I'm making a joke buddy. Don't get mad at me. I'm I'm playing you. I love you man. So just like anything else you don't have that emotional connection. So remember what you say may be taken in a different vein. But today uh I'm a good boy and I've said all sorts of nice things like I like pizza and tech was kickass and thanks for watching the video. Thank you very much Mr. What was it? MB Mega Mania Maniacs for making this and I look forward to updates and seeing additional things and maybe easier ways to um uh quickly go out and uh see what other channels are on that server cuz right now if there was other channels on here I don't know do you type in slash channel? No, that's not an option. That's not an option today. But maybe slash channels will bring up all the other channels in the group and you can join more than just the one that came cans. So anyway, thanks for watching the video. Have a great rest of your day. Bye.