Hi All,

Two questions : 

1. Infrared beaming in Palm
===========================
It is said that earlier palm devices do not have a
separate IR port. In such devices, the IrDA stack uses
serial port for IR communication. 

My question is - Does the PalmOS use the Serial
Controller itself for IR communication in the cases 
where IR port is not available ?

My udnerstanding of "hardware-aspect" of serial
communication is rather weak....

Any system that has the serial capabilites has a
Serial Controller ( so its an IC, is it ?)
Furthermore, on the devices that has a dedicated IR
port also contain "some" chips that are able to emit
IR light based on some controlling by the underlying
processor. 

Is my understanding correct? Would anyone lemme know
any URL where I can get a brief intro on this topic ?

2. Virtual Device Driver
=========================
My next question is - when do we write a virtual
device driver? The docs say that whenever one wanna do
the "buffering", one could use virtual device driver.
(I dont remember the exact wording but what it said
was "when you wanna send a byte at a time").

I have not understood how would writing a device
writer helps - as such, the Serial Manager passes just
a single bit at a time and I guess there is no way we
can overcome this lacuna anyway. So, the only
"marginal" performance boost that we get is the time
saved in gathering bits in a buffer and then sending
from this buffer - again one bit at a time. Is this
boost in performance is really "marginal" as my
udnerstanding is or are the things really different
than what I am thinking ?

Thank you all for your time/answer.

Kind regards,

Viren

=====
"There is nothing good or bad, 
There is nothing happy or sad,
Only thinking makes it so!"
- William Shakespeare

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