Linux Infrared HOWTO
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# 3.5. Palm III Connection - IrCOMM

- PPP Rui Oliveira wrote: "This is just to let you know that with the latest IrCOMM patch (050998) of Takahide Higuchi, I managed to HotSync and establish a PPP connection between my Palm III and my Linux box. I'm using IRLink (from IsComplete) to redirect the serial port to ir. Communication with pilot-xfer (available from the "pilot-link" package at kpilot ) works flawlessly. Although I was able to establish a PPP connection, I'm still unable to fetch mail and do Web browsing. This is probably due to connection time-outs. I am checking this out. Please see the PPP-HOWTO for further information about PPP. I managed to establish an apparently robust connection between my Linux box and a Palm III. The pppd invocation I use is as follows:

         /usr/sbin/pppd /dev/ircomm0 57600 192.168.2.10:192.168.2.11
         proxyarp passive silent persist noauth local nodetach

  Over the PPP connection I used ping, ssh, and HTTP. Strange is however the fact that discovery must be enabled (maybe obsolete) . Otherwise, even with an active IrCOMM connection, the link goes down due to a IrLAP disconnect. The pilot-link tools (used for Linux/Palm synchronization) also ran flawlessly over IrCOMM via `/dev/ircomm0`." There are also reports about kpilot, though not working as flawlessly as pilot-xfer.

- IrCOMM Jon Howell wrote: "I thought I'd try IrCOMM, since the Palm III can be made to reroute serial info to the IR port (using IrLink from IS/Complete, available at PalmCentral , and then you can run a terminal program (like PalmTelnet in serial mode) over IrDA. I can only assume it's using the IrCOMM protocol. I've tested this configuration between two Palm Pilots, but of course I can't know what the protocol running over the IR is." (1) Start HotSync on your Palm. You need the IrDA upgrade for the Palm to have IrCOMM support (2) Place the Palm in front of the dongle. (3) Start pilot-xfer -p /dev/ircomm0 -s <sync-dir> . And if you are lucky it will start syncing. If you start pilot-xfer before you start HotSync on the Pilot, you will _not_ be lucky! Maybe a terminal program like PalmTerm or MiniTerm (a former version of this HOWTO referred to it as MTerm) is also useful.

Wessel de Roode wrote: The Palmpilot is default locked on 57k. You can however if you write your own software for the Pilot, use the 115k line settings. I quote a part from the irlib.h:

    ---------- irlib.h from the SDK 3.0 from palmpilot -----
    // Options values for IrOpen
    #define irOpenOptBackground     0x80000000   // Unsupported background task use
    #define irOpenOptSpeed115200    0x0000003F   // sets max negotiated baud rate
    #define irOpenOptSpeed57600     0x0000001F   // default is 57600
    #define irOpenOptSpeed9600      0x00000003

Peter Pregler reported: If the Palm enters the range of the irda-device a popup appears with the text "Transmission: waiting for sender"

Ron Choy answered: There is a software called ShutupIR that is supposed to help with this problem of annoying popup I haven't tried it but it looks like it would fix your problem.

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