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                  This topic has been discussed extensively on both
                  the 
                    LIRC and Linux-IrDA
                  mailing lists. Just check the according links to the
                  mailing list archives for more information. Also
                  Werner Heuser has gathered very useful information
                  on this topic in part
                    II of his Linux InfraRed-HOWTO.
                 
                  Everybody agrees that real support for consumer IR
                  applications can only be developed using chipsets
                  that support CIR (consumer IR). Below is a list of
                  chipsets known to meet this condition.
                 
                  As I said on the main page it also works with
                  dongles connected to the serial port but this
                  requires some tweaking of the IrDA physical layer
                  protocol. So you can expect limitations to that
                  approach. From my experience transmitting of IR
                  signals is more likely to work than receiving and
                  actually there seems to exist software that uses
                  this method (OmniRemote,
                  
                    Software for IrDA Devices).
                 
                  Update: Actually Milan Pikula has written a
                  driver that uses SIR to emulate CIR. In fact if this
                  really works it should be easy to adjust his driver
                  to use the Tekram IRMate IR-210. The code
                  to initialize the dongle is already available.
                 
                  Recent mails to the Linux-IrDA list also showed that
                  the ACTiSYS ACT-IR200L
                  serial dongle will be able to at least send consumer
                  IR signals as it uses the CS8130 Multi-Standard Infrared Transceiver from
                  Cirrus Logic. I hope that someone will write a LIRC
                  compatible driver soon.
                 
                  Please note that for technical reasons it's not
                  possible to use USB IrDA dongles with LIRC.
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