But something is missing from IRC. Where's the sense of community? The familiarity of seeing the same people online every night. IRC is just too huge and impersonal. Nobody knows anybody else, and nobody gets to know anybody well.

Well there's good news for those of us who long for the good old days of D-Dial. D-Dial has returned! A few enterprising old-timers have transferred D-Dial, almost exactly as we knew it then, to the Internet. It's called ENTchat, and it can be reached via telnet, or, if you have a Java-capable browser, you can access D-Dial from the World Wide Web. There are also several D-Dial clients available for download from (believe it or not) "The Official D-Dial Homepage."

I strongly recommend taking the telnet route, as it provides the nearest approximation of what D-Dial was really like. The other clients have extra "features" meant to improve the chat interface, but, in my opinion, they're just making it less like D-Dial. Whatever you choose, have fun chatting once again on D-Dial, and I hope to see you online!