To those of you who were privy to my constant albeit rare moaning about my inability to enter into the herein called "Chat Room", let it be known, THE PROBLEM IS SOLVED.
The reason I am posting this it to perhaps help others who just may have the same problem. The problem was a firewall in my Motorola wireless gateway modem. I boiled away all other possibilities and determined THAT was the problem, disabled the firewall ( by a long lasting land line conversation with Motorola Tech Support) and lo and behold, I was right. What a country??

Mark