After seeing what you are looking at, try this: QSE series from Fairchild.
These are, first off for you, through hole parts - very similar to a TO-92
package. Next, they are pretty much equivalent to the 425-1170-1-ND part
you mentioned but for receive only.  Receive is the toughest job; transmit
is easy.  Look at the block diagram from the data sheet for the
425-1170-1-ND part and you'll see that you really need a transistor and two
resistors for transmit.  A base current limiting resistor and one in series
with the IR emitter diode.

One caveat here. I happen to have been playing with one of these yesterday.
 Digikey shows the QSE156-159 parts as being 935 nm.  The data sheet
mentions wavelength in only one place I could find and calls out 880 nm as
the wavelength of the test conditions.  I believe the receivers use pin
diodes and are actually broad band parts; they use optic qualities of the
plastic case to limit the incoming light frequencies.

In any case, I set one up on my bench and used a HP IR emitter diode and
fairly easily attained one meter separation distance. Get a few and have
some fun.

BTW, I wouldn't think of doing this without an oscilloscope. Unless I
didn't have a scope. In which case, I would still do it but it will proceed
a little slower since it is difficult to align the parts if you have no
indication of success.  Of course there are 1000 ways to use a DVM and
other tools so don't hesitate - get some parts and start learning something
new today.

At 11:49 AM 6/7/03 -0400, you wrote:
>Most of the devices I have seen, actually, all of the transceivers I have
seen
>aren't anything like To-220. They are like DIP except with SMT size pins...
>www.digikey.ca, part number 425-1170-1-ND (that's what I'm thinking of) for
>example. I think what Olin was describing maybe was just an emitter or
>receiver. I actually need a transceiver that is compliant with IrDA, and
these
>tend to be ~8 pins in some sort of smaller package unfortunately.
>

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