[ltp] Thinkpad R40 and IrDA to a mobile phone

[Tony Whitmore]

Hi all,

I've been trying to get my mobile phone and laptop talking under Linux. 
All I really want to achieve is the ability to use my mobile phone (a 
Samsung A300) to provide dial-up internet access to my laptop. (My 
laptop is an IBM ThinkPad R40.) The infrared port is based on an IBM 
chipset.

The good news is that I tested this under Windows, and after a bit of 
playing around with distances, I got the two talking and was even able 
to log into IRC. However, I've not been as successful under Linux, 
specifically Debian Unstable.

I've installed the irda-utils package, and have read through the 
Infrared HOWTO. However, I'm falling at an early hurdle, because I can't 
seem to detect my IrDA port under Linux at all! I have read that the 
IrDA interface has changed under 2.6 and most documentation hasn't yet 
been updated to reflect this.

This page[1] suggests that the port is only able to support SIR (rather 
than FIR) which is fine with me. I have ensured that the various IrDA 
modules are compiled (including IrTTY support). I have also added serial 
support to the kernel, because, as I understand it, it is essentially a 
"serial modem over Infrared" setup. lsmod shows the irda module is 
loaded during system boot. According to the HOWTO, dmesg should show 
information about the tty that the IrDA port is attached to. However, it 
doesn't:
tony@davros:~$ dmesg | grep tty
tony@davros:~$ dmesg | grep Serial
   Serial sub-system self-test: passed.
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision: 1.90 $ 8 ports, IRQ sharing disabled

scanport also doesn't show an IrDA port. So, it looks like something is 
missing, possibly kernel-wise, that is preventing the kernel from 
connecting the IrDA port to a tty. Does anyone have any ideas what I 
should try?

Cheers,

Tony Whitmore

[1]http://aloofhosting.com/gillion/ibmr40-details.html