IRDA to Ethernet gateway for PalmOS (ppp?)

[Fernando Cassia]

Does anyone know if IRDA (for networking) is still supported by Linux?

I need to build a gateway from IrDA to ethernet to make legacy palmos
devices talk to the internet.

I vaguely remember IrDA having different protocols, and palmOS not
supporting all of them. Maybe they did serial to ppp, like a dial-up modem?

And there were devices that were palm compatible, like this one...

https://amzn.to/3wAAc0C

Sadly these are long gone and not available even used.

So, I don't know where to start. Would Fedora Linux and the cheap USB-IrDA
adapters work?

If this list is not the right place, is there a forum with palmOS savvy
people where I should ask? Thanks in advance for any pointers...

FC

[Ed Greshko]

On 11/07/2021 10:39, Fernando Cassia wrote:
> Does anyone know if IRDA (for networking) is still supported by Linux?
>
> I need to build a gateway from IrDA to ethernet to make legacy palmos devices talk to the internet.
>
> I vaguely remember IrDA having different protocols, and palmOS not supporting all of them. Maybe they did serial to ppp, like a dial-up modem?
>
> And there were devices that were palm compatible, like this one...
>
> https://amzn.to/3wAAc0C https://amzn.to/3wAAc0C
>
> Sadly these are long gone and not available even used.
>
> So, I don't know where to start. Would Fedora Linux and the cheap USB-IrDA adapters work?
>
> If this list is not the right place, is there a forum with palmOS savvy people where I should ask? Thanks in advance for any pointers...
>
> FC

I can't specifically answer your question other than to say there is a....

irda-utils.x86_64 : Utilities for infrared communication between devices

package which may be worth exploring.

[Fernando Cassia]

On Sun., 11 Jul. 2021, 00:32 Ed Greshko,  wrote:
> I can't specifically answer your question other than to say there is a....
>
> irda-utils.x86_64 : Utilities for infrared communication between devices
>
> package which may be worth exploring.

Thanks Ed!

That helps. I also found an interest g ancient research paper at the hp.com
web site that confirms my assumptions and what I read many years ago...
There were different protocols... I now have to find which one palms used.

I do know it wasn't IRLAN because at one pint in tine I bought a IRDA
access point from HP and it didn't work at all. It worked for PCs but not
Palm PDAs. I do remember that bit...

Here is the excerpt (I'm pasting it in the interest of someone in the
future hitting this thread):

///

There are three different ways to carry TCP/IP over IrDA.

The most common is PPP over IrCOMM. This is the
method used to communicate with data-enabled mobile
phones (those which support IrDA).

IrCOMM is the IrDA stack's simple serial emulation layer,
so it's quite straightforward to setup PPP over this pseudo
serial port. Unfortunately, this introduces inefficiency due to
PPP framing and serial emulation.

The second option is to use IrLAN, which is the
official IrDA standard for transporting TCP/IP over IrDA, and is
implemented in IrDA LAN Access Points. IrLAN is
basically an Ethernet emulation over an IrDA socket.

The third option is to use IrNET, which is used by
Windows 2000 to connect two PCs together (Direct Cable
Connection over IrDA). IrNET is synchronous PPP over an
IrDA socket, using only the protocol part of PPP and
removing both the serial emulation and the PPP framing for greater
performance.
///

Now off to Google for some ancient PalmPilot and Linux FAQ...

FC