hey people this is my 3rd post on the forums and as you may well no i am lacking on electronic knowledge but anyway, i have an old packard bell machine, which has an INFA RED port on the front panel, i am in the process of building my own custom pc and was wondering if i can use this infared to controll anything i.e media player or some sort of music playing device, it ddidnt come with a remote so not sure wat it is there for really. any help or coments much appreciated, also i have a creative cdrom infra 1800 can i use the irin that for reciver and programme a remote????????????????????????????? Regards, Tommy
there are two main flavours of infra red decoder. IRDA - InfraRed Data Ascociation, a standard for bi-directional data transmission CIR - Consumer Infra Red, a wide bracket for simple ir transmission in the 20-50khz range, most TV remotes are coved in this. Look at where the infra red device, how many diodes there are, and where it connects on the motherboard, if its mapped as a COMM port on the old PC, then its almost certinally a IRDA deivce.
i would gues its IRDA then, you can check in the mobo manual, or in the BIOS, if when you enable the IR Port it replaces a COMM port, its almost certainly IRDA
IRDA is certainly more common on Dell, HP, etc, usually just used for file transfers between machines. But have a look at Meblin's site, he explains both systems and will even build you a receiver if you ask him nicely.
