Hi ! 7F00,0000,0000> circuit... but the transceiver (HSDL1001) whould work?!? Anyway, I > agree IrDA is cool (think EEG + PDA!) but unfortunatily it's not that > cheap especially if you go for the super overkill high-speed version > (4 Mbits per second). You have to fork out about $80 for a device > that connects to the printer port. The serial versions are cheaper. I Nobody is talking about the fast mode IrDA (4Mbit). First, we don't need these data rates. Second, the design would be much more complicated.Symbol 7F00,0000,0000Arial> found that the serial port Gerbil (what kind of name is that?! :-) > costs about $40. And for that price it really should be a primary > device. It's not that common that you want to use your PC as a > peripheral to your cell-phone or PDA. Like I said. It's possible to connect something to the motherboard to get full IrDA. Symbol 7F00,0000,0000Arial> > The best way to go is perhaps to build your own tranceiver. Ubicom > makes really fast (50MHz+) microcontrollers and has source code for > an IrDA (IrComm) stack. Team that with a tranceiver module and you > might get away for a lot less, maybe $10. > I was thinking about this too. Acually I built a prototype with a Ubicom uC. But it's quite expensive and it will complicate our device a lot if we have two different brands of microcontrollers. 7F00,0000,0000> > An interesting note on the second site is that Win 2000 does not > > support virtual ports. I thought IrDA data could be read as if it > > were from a COM port, but apparently not on Win 2000. That's maybe not such a big problem. I think there are drivers available from third partys (not MS), and even maybe free ones. I think there are many people who have the same problems.Symbol 7F00,0000,0000Arial> > > > It looks like the HSDL 7000 does not transmit IrDA but a much > simpler > > protocol - it "interfaces with IrDA-compliant transceiver". IrDA > > would be fun to do because it is becoming a standard in infrared > > transmission, but it may be overkill in this situation. Yes, right. Overkill maybe, but still nice and maybe not so difficult to implement with the Microchip chip. MoritzSymbol ---------------------- Moritz von Buttlar moritz@v...