Woohooo ! Yesterday I received my brand new IR serial receiver, which I plan to use to control simple functions of my video player at home.
Some background first: I connected my 42" 720p Plasma TV to my computer using component cable from my Radeon X850 . Picture quality is astounding, but thats not the point. As soon as I got home I happily rushed to connect it and to begun the tedious programming and configuration between WinLirc and my Harmony 880 remote !! What a geeky pleasure I thought....
And then reality called..... First my 2 years old pc didn't had serial ports built on motherboard, not yet giving up on hope I went to look in my spare parts box for Serial port header but it wasn't there ether... BUT, not all over I went to ebay to look for cheap serial PCI adapter cards and indeed found a few under $10 shipped - great deal, but I woun't get them till another week or two.. depends...
Lucky, friend of my at work loaned me his no name USB to Serial adapter , which after some googling for it's pid_2303 worked great with Prolific PL-2303.
BUT, After waisting 2-3 hours fiddling around with WinLIRC , different configs and settings, I found entry on LIRC FAQ - LIRC doesn't work with USB to Serial adapters..... and hence I want my time back :(
In mean while I tried to Install KnoppMyth on my old (I should say Antique) K2-500Mhz/512Mb Ram , since I got native Serial port on back and MythTV got built in support for Lirc. The install got frozen during format of it's 10gb HD, but then again It just might have bad sectors...
Will try again tonight with new hard drive...
I mean while thinking of building a dedicated and much more newer HTPC - Currently thinking of Pentium 4 3.0Ghz/800Mhz 90nm , 4gb of DDR400, HP motherboard and for now 40gb HD, in future much larger array....
P.S: Serial receiver was picked due to fact the distance between TV and PC is over 20 ft and I'm reluctant to spend major $ for active usb extender solution....
Serial DB-9 cable 25ft long on Monoprice is $2.89
Update: After more careful examination my pc DOES have Serial DB-9 port after all.
It is hidden on motherboard, but strangely enough it (the motherboard) didn't had COM bracket in package...
Bought the bracket on ebay for $4.68 shipped.
P.S: My motherboard is DFI Lanparty Nforce4 Ultra
