Anyone use IrDA to transfer from Zaurus to Mac?

[ganoe]

Far from ideal, but I was wondering if iCal or the Mac Address Book can receive beamed address and appointment info from the Zaurus.  I know some of the Powerbook models had IrDA ports (unfortunately mine does not).  Are there any USB IrDA dongles that work with OS X?

[twocargar]

I tried fooling around with this, but couldn\'t get it to work.  My PowerBook G3 (Pismo) running OS 10.3.2 saw the Z, but could not accept any files from it.  It was really buggy too having IrDA turned on.  I have a feeling this isn\'t something that is being developed anymore because of technologies like BlueTooth.  Maybe some fiddling in the terminal could fix this(?).  I remember reading that the IrDA port on PowerBooks was for things like IrDA modems or cell phones with infrared ports, not for file exchanges.

[Anonymous]

I tried this with Windows XP and 2000, works fine.

[ganoe]

I have a feeling this isn\'t something that is being developed anymore because of technologies like BlueTooth.  Maybe some fiddling in the terminal could fix this(?).  I remember reading that the IrDA port on PowerBooks was for things like IrDA modems or cell phones with infrared ports, not for file exchanges.

This seems to match up with what I\'ve seen.  I did a little searching around on the web, and it seems like only Apple in Europe ever advertized any kind of IrDA adapter for the Mac.  There is a driver in one of my library folders, and I get the impression from what I\'ve read on the web that it is for some USB IrDA adapter sold by Belkin (SmartBeam), but only in Europe.  The sites I have seen talking about IrDA on the Mac say it uses a chipset from KC Technology and some other adapters with that chipset might work.

In the USA, seems like MadsonLine is the only company that is/was selling an IrDA adapter for the Mac
http://www.madsonline.com/?higoto.html~mainFrame
I can\'t seem to find a link to the adapter from their main page, so maybe they\'ve dropped it.

If you say file transfer doesn\'t work, I\'ll take your word on it.  It wouldn\'t surprise me.  Apple does not seem to want to admit that they support IrDA at all anymore.  Since your Powerbook actually has an IR port, do you have any support contact at Apple you could ask about it?

I\'m sure someone who was motivated could write some better drivers for the Mac, or port the Linux drivers over, but the best we could get from that is the ability to beam vCard/vCal items to/from the Zaurus.  It would be nice to have, but a real sync solution would probably be a better investment of time.

[dhns]

I have used the built-in IrDA port of my PowerBook G4 (first series) a while for accessing the modem in my mobile phone. This was rather simple to set up in the Network system settings (select IrDA, set the TCP/IP settings, PPP settings of your dial-up provider and the modem parameters).

But it appears to me that this is the only IrDA function that is supported by MacOS X 10.3. As IrDA is a rather complex suite of protocols (like Bluetooth Profilex with OBEX), Apple might have implemented only the Infrared transport layer which sends raw data blocks between IrDA devices and IrCOM which emulates a remote \"COM\" serial interface (well, MS-DOS is still alive!). And the TCP/IP/PPP stack can use this serial line.

Other protocols like Infrared File Transfer and Infrared Printing (HP did promote IrDA for a while in the LaserJet series) are probably not available.

So you would need:
a) an IrDA device (USB) - those for the Wintel PCs might work
 an IrDA file transfer protocol Kernel Extension - no idea whether this exists
c) a sync software that sends data through IrDA and is compatible to what the Zaurus expects - I bet that this doesn\'t exist

-- hns