chat is limited... after a few lines I cannot get local or friends chat...

[zippjack Torok]

i cannot see my chat after a few lines.. it is as if i Logged out... and when I do log out ad sign back in.. my chat is there... Als

[Marigold Devin]

Welcome to Second Life Answers, zippjack

Please restart your modem/router. This problem, and also the other one with the sims not being visible may well be down to connection issues.

[Rolig Loon]

It sounds like a common case of chat lag, usually a symptom of a slowdown in the sim's servers.  If you open your Statistics Bar (CTRL + Shift + 1) and scroll down to look at the sim's stats, you'll probably see that the FPS number is hopping all over the place, often well below the ideal of 45.  Also, the Time Dilation number, which should be close to 1.0, may be dramatically lower.  There's not much you can do about either one unless it's your own sim and you can restart it. 

It's possible that you also have a slow Internet connection, which would add to the problem.  While you still have the Statistics Bar open, scroll back to the top and look at your Ping number (should be < 150ms or so) and the Packet Loss number (should be close to 0.00%).  If either is higher than it should be, you could be losing data in transmission, or at least experiencing a big delay.  You might try rebooting your router and checking to be sure that you don't have a data cable sitting on top of an unshielded power cord.