Irda confusion

[Rick T]

Hi,   I am pretty new to Palm os and have quite a bit of confusion regarding communicating via the IR port. My application is to simply down load about 64k bytes of binary data from an embedded device -- a simple data logger.  That device has a PIC microcontroller and a Microchip MCP2150 IrDA controller.  I'm not set on the MCP2150, and a MCP2120 might actually be better suited.  I want to download the binary data onto a Tungsten E.  It's cheap, fast, & has great display capabilities.   Let me break my question into 2 parts:   1)  While scouting around news forums & the Microchip tech bulletins I found information that leads me to believe that the Tungsten E isn't suited for IrDA communications.  The reason seems to be the number of BOF's requested vs. the number of them sent/ignored by the T-E.  Is there a workaround other than use another handheld?  Does the problem occur only for the Ircomm layer?  Will things work okay for Tiny TP layer?  Raw IR?  If no workaround, does the Tungsten E2 have the problem fixed and has it been tested?   2)  Being new to Palm development, I'm completely overwhelmed by the many ways to communicate via the IR port with the SDK.  When would I use the Serial manager & when would I use the IR manager?  Exchange manager?  Any other ways that I don't know about?  I really haven't seen a fantastic tutorial that explaines WHY a specific approach should be taken.  Tutorials & books seem to present code without discussing why things are the way they are.    What I would love is for someone who has done something like this before to tell me something like, "Look at this part of the API Documentation on page ____, and pay close attention to ____, and these steps need to be in this order because ____."  Kind of a 'do it this way because it works' approach.  I'm too ignorant to reinvent the wheel.    A few helpful hints would be greatly appreciated.   Thanks a bunch, Rick -- For information on using the PalmSource Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/