The official IRC channel for Dreampipe is [ irc.choopa.net:6667/#dc-chat ]. I don't know about its active hours, but at any given time there are a lot of people "away" or "lurking" over there.
If people really wanted IRC integrated here at DC Talk or any other Web page for that matter, then one could implement [ https://kiwiirc.com/ ] as it is a JavaScript-based IRC client for Web pages. Kiwi IRC is probably too demanding for the Dreamcast's Web browsers, but those browsers have an IRC client integrated into them already anyway so I'd see it as a win-win.