Re: [NTLK] IrDA Not Need Slowdown?

On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 11:47 AM, SteveCraft <steve@craftsathome.net> wrote:
> That's pretty frustrating, but thanks for the info. I bought a very cheap
> USB IrDA thing and it didn't work because of Vista incompatibility. I found
> something with better drivers and thought that I could get it to emulate a
> COM port, from there I could use NCU with "serial port COM7" on the Windoze
> side and "connect via IrDA" on the Newton side.
>
> But if it won't work, it won't work. You saved me a few bucks. Thanks!
>
> Right now, I connect my Newts and eMates to a Mac Powerbook 3400c via
> serial. It works fine. That Mac can connect to other Windows boxes via FTP.
> Because Windows machines are my primary systems, I'd rather eliminate the
> Mac as the "middleman". I have found Bluetooth to be more work than I want
> to deal with (and will have a few working like-new PICO cards up for sale
> soon). Since IrDA is not going to work, I'll get deeper into WiFi and see
> that that gets me.
>
> Thanks again.
>

So your idea of transfer over IrDA got me to start playing around with it.
Looking in the Newton Wiki <
http://web.archive.org/web/20080213034321/tools.unna.org/wikiwikinewt/index.php/IrDAConnection>
i found that its not as crazy as first thought. The tools Eckhart Köppen
created make the process really easy. After making sure I had Neo, Nitro,
ntox, NHttpLib, and IC/VC installed, I went to testing with a 900MHz IBM
ThinkPad running XP and built in IrDA port.

 I tested sending/receiving common files like packages, notes, contacts (as
vcards), and calendar events (as ICS files). Initial results weregood.
sending files from the Newton worked. The notes were best viewed in MS Word,
contacts were readable by Outlook Express, and while I didn't check I assume
the ics files would work in Outlook or other calendar programs.

Sending files from XP to the Newton was a little less reliable (on the XP
side). After about one or two file transfers, XP's IR would lock up. Then I
had to go into Device Manager and disable/enable the IrDA port. On the up
side sending relatively large files weren't a problem. A 228KB package of
DopeWars transferred perfectly.

While it may not be a problem free solution, using IrDA to transfer files
between XP and a Newton does work. If I had an laptop running Vista I would
test it.

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Received on Wed Dec 17 16:34:04 2008