I am trying to connect using ip:port, not odbc
Actually pgAdmin uses the ODBC driver to make the connection, you just don't see that! The error you are getting does mean exactly what it says - it can't connect to the server. Some things to check:
1) Can you ping your server using the hostname/ip address that you are specifying in the pgAdmin logon dialogue?
2) Is the postmaster really running on the tcp/ip port specified in the pgAdmin logon dialogue - make sure either the relevant option is set in your postgresql.conf file in $PGDATA, or that the postmaster was started with the -i option. Netstat will show the default domain socket as well as the tcp/ip socket - don't get them confused :-)
3) Does $PGDATA/pg_hba.conf on you server allow access to the template1 database from your client PC?
Please let me know if this fixes your problem.
Regards, Dave.
--
Dave Page (dpage@postgresql.org)
http://pgadmin.postgresql.org/