I came across an old serial remote/mouse thing I bought a long time ago, an "Interact Web Remote Professional".

I used to use it with winamp, for skipping songs, and that was really cool, especially at parties, when I could lineup a play list, and wander around carrying the remote, and skip songs remotely.

I wondered about getting it running under linux, with LIRC, or something else.

I'm not sure that I will be able to get it running though, because it looks like LIRC bypasses the normal serial support, and talks to the serial port directly, and my laptop doesn't have any "real" serial ports.

All I have is a USB -> serial adapter, and it says the homebrew serial devices don't work like this, and I tried selecting a few different serial devices support, but they all reference using a real serial port.

I did a bit of googling, and turned up this page, a slashdot post (which seems to have no comments at all, my god, do I win a prize for finding a slashdot article with no comments?), and this page, which doesn't have much information at all, but it does link to the source code of support for the remote that someone wrote.

That support is based on talking to a real serial port too though, so that doesn't get me far.

I also found this page, which mentions the web remote, but this tool is running windows, and has a Red Hat sticker on his case, and doesn't even run linux.

Back in 2000, someone asked on the LIRC mailing list about support for the same remote, but received no replies, so that doesn't help much.

Oh well, I suppose I can build a usbirboy, it looks like only a few dollars worth of parts, and hopefully I can use the same remote, but it's not like I have a shortage of remotes around here.

The only problem with the usbirboy, is that I need to program the IC on it, and I don't think either my nppp (no parts pic programmer) or a phoenix will do the job, so I'd have to build the "prommer" to flash the chip.

The other possibility, is that I buy a USB "IR2PC" unit, from here, but it's $84! So I don't think I'll be doing that.