HOWTO Connect to the Crystal IRC Network

IRC Clients:

mIRC (Shareware)
- CrystalmIRC
- Minard Script
X-Chat (open-source)
irssi (open-source)

mIRC

If you're a Windows user, mIRC is probably the IRC client you will have had the most contact with. While it isn't the best thing since sliced bread, it is fairly powerful, while retaining a familiarity and ease of use that are essential to a comfortable IRC experience. The latest version of mIRC for Windows can always be obtained here, and it is fairly simple to install mIRC if you can read the on-screen instructions.

Connecting to CrystalIRC with mIRC

X-Chat

X-Chat is a multiplatform IRC client with freely available source code. This means two things. It means that

you get a nice free piece of software without the police staring at you very hard
if you don't mind tinkering a bit, you can optimise the software to suit your system

You can obtain X-Chat for Linux at http://www.xchat.org/ and a free build for Windows here and for Linux you will find X-Chat in your package manager, or the source code is here. If you go with the source code, just grab the latest version. And yes, 2.10 is later than 2.8 .

Connecting to CrystalIRC with X-Chat

In the X-Chat window you will see several boxes(fields). Go to the text input box and type:
/server irc.crystalirc.net
after pressing Return and waiting for the client to connect, (you will see a box saying "connection complete", close this and disregard it, it is irrelevant for now) then type:
/join #CrystalIRC
and once more press Return.
Congratulations! Assuming you followed those instructions correctly and actually have your internet connection plugged in (or your wireless switched on), you've just entered CrystalIRC!