Hi, Robin-

Re. InstaCorr---I have also seen that kind of thing happen with resting state, in particular: the data there is residuals, so of mean zero, and then if you have smaller noise in the brain than outside... it can be tricky to automask directly. If you need to mask the data (do you?) you can load in a separate dataset there, in that "Mask" row of the controller.

Re. ports---I think using port "number 0" is still OK. Actually, that is what the @RunVolGroupInCorr demo script in ~/AFNI_demos/AFNI_InstaCorrDemo.mini/vol/ has explicitly set (line 28ff):

afni -niml -npb 0 -yesplugouts -layout DemoLayout
sleep 1
3dGroupInCorr -npb 0 -setA G1.grpincorr.niml -verb &

How about if you try running the GroupInCorr demo from the Bootcamp on that machine? There is a Setup and a Run script. We know that should work, so that might provide a diagnostic.

-pt