Nitro

Nitro completes the IrDA stack on Newton OS 2.1 devices (MP2x00 and eMate) by providing the TinyTP and IrCOMM layers.

  • Version: 1.1
  • Author: Eckhart Köppen (Paul Guyot for RelocHack)
  • License: GPL 2.0
  • Download via SourceForge

Introduction

The IrDA stack on Newton OS 2.1 devices is missing the TinyTP, IrCOMM and IrOBEX layer required by almost any IrDA capable peer device. Nitro adds these missing layers via a Newton OS Communication Tool. Its usage is comparable to using the serial or IrDA communications tools.

To use Nitro, install either NitroMP2100D.pkg (German MP2100), NitroMP2x00US.pkg (US MP2x000) or NitroeMate.pkg (eMate). It is also recommended to install Neo which provides OBEX data exchange over IrDA and TCP/IP. In addition, IC/VC is a useful extension to send and receive data in vCard and iCalendar/vCalendar format.

IrCOMM

General Usage

There is a test application included in the distribution that can be used to connect to a peer device, send strings to it and display the result. This is useful to determine if a connection can be made at all, and for cell phone modems, if basic AT commands work.

At the moment, using Nitro requires that applications are modified to request the “ircm” service instead of the “irda” or “aser” service. Practically, this means simply modifying the service identifier used when instantiating an endpoint to “ircm”. This is a design decision to let the existing IrDA stack coexist with the IrCOMM extensions and not get in the way of existing IrDA applications. It would probably also be possible to do a full transparent replacement.

For applications that are not IrCOMM aware and use for example only serial (not even IrDA), patching is the easiest way to use IrCOMM. Patching an application is done by opening the package file in a hex editor and replacing all byte sequences 00 61 00 73 00 65 00 72 with 00 69 00 72 00 63 00 6d. This replaces the string “aser” with the string “ircm”. Note that the effects of this are not fully known, but at least the NIE Modem & Serial support module uses IrCOMM instead of plain serial afterwards.

Mobile internet over IrCOMM

One example for IrCOMM usage is the NIE Modem & Serial support module. A patched version is available here. Follow these steps to use IrCOMM instead of serial:

  • Install Nitro
  • Install the patched NIE Modem support module
  • Open Internet Setup and create a new “Generic” setup
  • Specify “Serial” for the “Connect using” setting
  • Set the rest of the parameters as required
  • If connecting via a cell phone modem, any dialing commands and modem setup strings can be via the Login Script (e.g. “Send ATDT*99#”, “Send newline”, “Wait for CONNECT”