So, I got my sharks the other day (thanks, Chris!), and I've been playing
with them lately.

Recently I've been investigating IrDA, and I've wondered if the Shark can
do IrDA.  Here's what I think the status of this is, and I'm wondering
if I'm correct, and what other people think.

The I/O controller can modulate slow-ir (SIR), which means it can
do IrDA up to 115.2kbps.

The transmitter can be tuned by the hardware, so I think all you have
to do is set the IrDA bits, and it should presumably work fine.  The
receiver module has a built-in bandpass filter which the Shark
documentation claims prevents the use of IrDA; however, the
documentation for a IrDA receiver I have says _it_ has a bandpass
filter set at 38kHz which is the same as the one on the Shark, so I
don't know what to believe :-)

I think that in the best case, I can use the existing hardware and
just change the configuration of the UART.  Worst case, I might have to
replace the receiver module.  Anyone else have any more insight?

BTW, the schematic refers to a "National Semiconductor IR front end
reference", and I can't find any reference to that at all.  Anyone
know what that document is?

--Ken