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Linux Infrared HOWTO
5.1.5. scanport
scanport can be used to get the correct device ID for a chip. It's part of the hwtools package (on Debian,
probably same elsewhere). You just type it in and it scans the I/O ports from 0x100 to 0x400 − the usual ISA
range. Above 0x400 there are shadows of below 0x400 devices, and beyond that there are PCI devices, so the
default is not to scan above 0x400. "Anyway, I had to manually scan using inb to find my chip's I/O.
Fortunately I didn't have to go far to find it. (Newer sound cards often sit at 0x530ish, with 0x220 reserved for
legacy compatibility modes) Normally, if you know where some device is located you just point the driver at
it and the driver probes to see if it's the device the driver is expecting. Not entirely safe, but much safer than
every driver probing every I/O port looking for something it thinks it can understand. scanport only does
reads, which are usually safe."
5.2. Mailing List
You are welcome to use the Linux−IrDA mailing list for posting questions, answers, bug−reports, patches,
suggestions and comments about Linux−IrDA. Please note that mailinglist doesn't accept mail from
non−subscribers. This is to provide high signal−noise ratio and avoid spam. For subscribing and
unsubscribing point your browser to irda−users and here you will find Linux−IrDA mailing list control page.
Read on "Subscribing to Linux−IrDA" section and fill email address field and password field (twice). Then
press "Subscribe" button.
To post a message to all the list members, send email to <irda−[email protected]>. Before asking
questions consider this as a last resort after reading the documentation and searching Google or the search
engine of your choice. Please check the archive for answers to your questions also. It will be much easier
quicker to help you, if you provide some information. Please include the output of:
uname −a
cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
setserial −g −a /dev/ttyS*
findchip
irdadump
and of course any error messages, and the relevant parts of dmesg. Please make also sure you provide some
information about IrDA support in the BIOS and the Linux distribution you are using.
5.3. GUIs: Gnome, KDE
The Gnome IrDA applet is a GNOME IrDA applet for monitoring IrDA devices.
Beamster is a little Gtk/python utility to help with IrDA transfers especially from and to Linux PDAs
(ftp://ftp.handhelds.org/pub/linux/dists/familiar/feeds/unstable/packages/armv4l/). It can talk to most
handhelds/laptops/printers which use the IrDA Object Exchange protocol (OBEX), in fact any device which
already works with the openobex package will work with this. It should be fairly intuitive to use. Make sure
that IrDA is 'On', position the two devices, wait for the status bar to show that a new peer has been discovered,
choose the transfer mode (use 'Palm3' for PalmOS peers and 'Windows' for everything else) then press 'beam'
or 'receive' as appropriate. Note that 'receive' toggles on and off. Tested transfers to and from this IrDA
devices: an old Palm3, a Psion 5MX, a Windows 98 ThinkPad and a Linux desktop with an Actisys L220+
dongle.
Chapter 5. Advanced Topics
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