To
make the Bluetooth communication reliable we developed our
own serial-port-micro-stack.
Unfortunately
- Windows 2000 and its ACPI extensions very much fiddle with
mobile computers' communication ports. On our Toshiba laptop
- the system maintained an illegal state of the closed COM
port lines (all voltages at 0V). After opening the port -
the voltages were coming back to their normal values, which
easily stupified the Bluetooth module.
It
is possible to turn off the ACPI extensions, but this in turn,
results in losing control over system hibernation - after
couple minutes of inactivity the laptop hardware was putting
the computer in a power saving mode, which efficiently shattered
the wireless communication.
To
prevent the laptop from hibernating we could have someone
relentlessly click mouse buttons or...
...have
an autofire-enabled mouse !
The
main idea is extremely simple - a standard 555 timer IC every
10 seconds crosses the middle-button microswitch, which is
fully equal to a "manual" click.
With
such a mouse our Toshiba would never hibernate.
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