Really appreciate your comments:
Oddly HTTP delivers the best success.
I get 401, 404, 405 errors and think my issues are about structuring the statement correctly, my HTTP scripting knowledge is poor at best, and information seems thinner than my hairline.
http://user:password@127.0.0.1:8332/ came afterwards, I have a password which appears to login with any rpcusername, as implied by Satoshi earliest rpc server but the URL returns malformed error for HTTP/GET? statements also had browser issues simply not wanting to play but think that is solved.
Any idea how an HTTP POST would have be structured in this period, examples may be a big help ... just your best guess?
thx