Thunderbird news-only account setup?

[NightShade]

HI All,

I'm using Thunderbird on a Solaris box and am having no luck setting up the news reader for access to my Giganews account. Incidentally, I'm also accessing Giganews through a http proxy (inside company firewall), so this may be one too many ingredients to the pot.

Even when I select 'Use secure connection' and 'Always request authentication' (individually, separately, or together), Thunderbird does not prompt me for a username/password to get into Giganews.

Each time I try to subscribe to newsgroups, I get 'Can't connect to xxxxxx'.

Any ideas?

TIA,
Curtis