Hi Michael,
>It seems as if I need a c compiler to begin with.
Correct. That is true for all platforms that GCC is used upon.
>I have installed the prepackaged gcc3.1 compilers that come with the MAC operating system; however, they do not have g77 bundled in there so I uninstalled those binaries and tried to build from scratch.
Build from scratch first, THEN uninstall those binaries.
HTH, --Eljay