Using IrDA "dongles" with FreeBSD 4-stable?

[Mark Santcroos]

[ Sorry for the late reply ]

On Mon, Jul 07, 2003 at 03:47:13PM +0200, Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> If I want birda to talk to it, doesn't it have to act as a serial port?
> Or am I mistaken?

I think it should at this moment/in this situation.

> After some searching, I'm left with some questions;
> - do we have support for IrDA dongles (which connects through usb) in
>   FreeBSD at all?

By means of birda, only serial dongles.

> - will birda talk to this dongle even if FreeBSD doesn't see it as a
>   serial port?

Nope.

> - does anybody have more information that might help me to get this
>    working? I have searched bot the net and Google groups, but haven't
>    found any useful information yet. 

Well, not much at this time. I have a serial and a usb dongle from a
manufacturer for development. While the serial "just" works, I haven't
looked at the USB dongle yet.

How hard it will be to support it depends mostly on how the device works.
If it presents itself as a serial usb device, then it should be easier. If
it is just a "normal" usb device, then support needs to be written for
that.

I don't know of anyone currently looking into this. I will myself at some
point, but really can't give you any timeframe on that.

Hope this helps.

Mark

-- 
Mark Santcroos                    RIPE Network Coordination Centre
http://www.ripe.net/home/mark/    New Projects Group/TTM