IrDA port controller

[luked]

Hi All-

My Dell Inspiron 7000 notebook came with an IrDA port which uses the SMC IrCC controller. The Dell literature doesn’t cover how to obtain and install the proper driver, and there is no driver download available on the Dell or SMC websites that I can find.

The Win98 Device Manager shows the dreaded yellow exclamation mark, and my device status reads “This device is either not present, not working properly, or does not have all the driers installed. (Code 10) Try upgrading the device drivers for this device.” The name of the device is “SMC IrCC (Infrared Communications Controller)”

The Dell machine was delivered with the IrDA port disabled in the CMOS setup. To enable it, I selected the “PnPOS” setting, which would in theory cause the plug-and-play operating system to choose the base address, irq and if required the dma channel. Also in CMOS is the chance to set “SIR” for Slow Infrared or “FIR” for Fast Infrared. I have tried both. Currently, CMOS is configured for Fast Infrared.

I plan to use the IrDA port to upload pictures from my Kodak DC260 camera without cables. In your experience, are IrDA ports still too new and too fussy for users who aren’t computer hobbyists? If you think my pursuit will prove more trouble than benefit, I’d appreciate your advice on that, too.

Thanks for your time.

[Jim Webster]

I am just learning about this stuff myself. From my understanding, Windows 98 has built-in support for this (I forget what MS calls it now). You definitely need to contact Dell and have them take care of the problem. The below has a little bit to do with this. It is actually a cut-and-paste that I had wrote for someone else. I am not going to edit it. And they also never gave me any feedback about it, so ....

Go to this URL: http://www.ddj.com/articles/1999/9906/9906toc.htm
And scroll down to this article:
WIN32 DRIVERS FOR DIGITAL/VIDEO CAMCORDERS by Thomas Tewell
I was hoping that one could view the article OnLine, but...
This is an excellent article on IEEE 1394. Even though it
is a programming article, it is rather educational. And it
explains how this specification/technology allows these
devices to be PnP (and Hot Swappable).
One can order back issues of articles or magazines from here:
http://www.ddj.com/articles/

[luked]

Dell maintains a peer forum in which I just found my answer. In synopsis, I had to disable the system port and change the mode of the parallel port from ECP to BiDirectional.