Thank you everyone for your expertise and opinions. I am currently a fairly happy bunny thn, I am installing to a P4, 1G ram and a 40gig Hd with a 40Gig as second drive ( hope to get a newer set up soon if I can cope with this OS and justify the expense.). I have foolowed a set up procedure by Rhyous who I know is a member here and I give him my thanks and respect for his web page because I spent a day and a night trying to get it to install without that !, and failed.. The reason I sked this question in the firt place, I thought my hardware was not sufficient to run it.
Now if I could just get my eggdrop to appear on irc, or set up ftp and Telnet that would complete my steep learning curve for the week.
Again, thank you everyone for your help.