Some of you may have seen my attempts (link) on YouTube of me trying to fulfill the promise of Steve Jobs during the iMac G3 debut. And that is the action of beaming digital camera photos to the iMac via wireless IrDA. I'm using a Kodak DC260 camera which has an IrDA 1.0 compaliant port on it. I can send and recieve photos to my other Kodak camera fine, which means that the feature is working. The manual of the camera was written for Windows but does confirm IrDA will work for sending photos to a PC.
I've run into a few problems, but rather than watch hours of me scratching my head, here's what I've found out so far.
So I think this is a software issue. I cannot seem to find a piece of software that can signal to the sending device that it is ready to receive data, and then accept that data.
Maybe there was a piece of Mac OS 8/9 or Mac OS X software that shipped with digital cameras or cell phones that was used for IrDA transfers? Apparently Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" will see the IrDA port as a serial port. I'm going out on a limb to think that maybe all I need is some piece of software for IrDA transfers? Maybe it just needs to send any signals needed to the sending device to initiate the transfer?
Crazy, but it may work.
Any thoughts on this would be great!
-Steve
I've run into a few problems, but rather than watch hours of me scratching my head, here's what I've found out so far.
- The iMac G3 is running Mac OS 8.6, it now has all the required IrDA software installed that originally shipped with it
- The Apple Infrared control panel can "see" the device, but does not communicate with it in order to receive or send data properly.
- I can only seem to set the IrDA port to AppleTalk mode and/or TCP/IP mode. This is great for networking, but not for device to device connections.
- Apple's IR file transfer application will not work on the iMac G3 which has IrDA. This utility only works with the older IR Talk standard.
- I know this would be stupid slow, I'm just curious if this was ever possible on the iMac!
So I think this is a software issue. I cannot seem to find a piece of software that can signal to the sending device that it is ready to receive data, and then accept that data.
Maybe there was a piece of Mac OS 8/9 or Mac OS X software that shipped with digital cameras or cell phones that was used for IrDA transfers? Apparently Mac OS X 10.2 "Jaguar" will see the IrDA port as a serial port. I'm going out on a limb to think that maybe all I need is some piece of software for IrDA transfers? Maybe it just needs to send any signals needed to the sending device to initiate the transfer?
Crazy, but it may work.
Any thoughts on this would be great!
-Steve