Re: tlug: Problems with Toshiba notebooks?

["Stephen J. Turnbull" <turnbull@example.com>]

>>>>> "David" == J David Beutel <jdb@example.com> writes:

    David> On Tue, 6 Jan 1998, Stephen J. Turnbull wrote:
    >> Um, what do you plan to drive that interface with?  Is there a
    >> kernel driver now?

    David> Not that I know of.  I was saying that Linux may not be
    David> able to use Toshiba's IR.  I haven't tried it yet, and as
    David> you imply, it may require a non-existant driver.  I might
    David> hope to use it just like a serial port, but it has no
    David> COM1/2/3/4 setting in the CMOS BIOS setup screens, unlike
    David> the modem and serial port.

Unfortunately, it's not that simple, except on Win95 with IrComm.
Most IR interfaces are going to expect a specific protocol which will
probably be IrDA-related, but unfortunately the IrDA working went way
overboard (Don Becker's opinion, I'm not qualified) and has defined
not only the physical medium but well into the level of say TCP/IP,
maybe even TFTP.

Ie, in the PPP over serial line case we have (I'm not an OSI guru, so
if I've got the specs wrong let me know)

pre-physical layer: modem physical cabling, signal levels, etc
physical layer:     modem frequency, stop bits, parity, data bits, etc.
network link:       PPP
routing:            IP
data link:          TCP

Becker suggests that IrDA should have specified the physical layer to
be compatible with PPP, since it's hard to see how this medium can
really be expected to multiplex well.  It seems that the routing and
data link specs in the IrDA standard are there simply to kludge around
problems with multiplexing the physical medium.  Anyway, it isn't just 
a serial line.

For more info see ftp://cesdis.gsfc.nasa.gov/pub/linux/misc/irda.html.  
You may be able to substitute an http for the ftp above.

Steve

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