Remote control of HCPC (long)

["Graham Howe" <graham@xxxxxxx>]

Progress on my HCPC (home cinema PC) is coming along nicely as those
of you who attend UKHA 2003 will soon find out. However I do have an
annoying problem which someone here might be able to help with.

I have the Accent HTPC case http://www.quietpc.com/uk/cases.php
which
has an optional IR receiver and remote control. I have installed the
receiver (a little board behind the VFD window) and I can power the
PC on and off with a button on the remote. However, I can't get
anything else to work via the remote. The site recommends IR
Assistant http://www.irassistant.com/dotcom/v_current/
software which
I have installed and it in turn requires a driver. In the absence of
any documentation or markings on the board, I have installed
the 'General COM driver' from the IR Assistant site, but am not
having much success.

When I point the remote at the PC in an attempt to learn an IR
command, I see it receive a command in the IR Assistant software, but
it doesn't seem to learn it properly. Subsequent presses of
the 'learned' button are extremely unreliable and I have only
occasionally got it to work. Now it could well be that I am using the
wrong driver, but I can't find any hint as to which would be the
right one.

So, I wondered about using Girder which has been touted here quite a
bit. Does this also require specific drivers or am I likely to have
more success with it? At the end of the day, the user interface I'm
using is easy to navigate with a mouse or even cursor keys, so I
don't need the remote to be highly complex. The other option is of
course getting something like IRMAN, but I am reluctant to buy
another remote when I have one that is specifically designed for this
case.

On a related topic, I have an old IR keyboard/mouse which is highly
sensitive to direction and therefore not at all suitable for
controlling the PC from across the room. There was some talk of a
wireless keyboard/mouse on here a few weeks back (Gyration?) which I
believe was RF rather than IR. Is this a good solution and if it is
RF based, then could I place the receiver inside the case (there is
lots of room inside) so that I don't see it?