You don't really have a speed problem, as your pulses are fairly long. But why don't you want to use an IR IC receiver? - these are very simple, very easy to use, and will probably (certainly?) greatly out perform anything you can build.
To do it with a photodiode means building high gain opamp circuits, filters, AGC circuits, detectors, and either a PLL or a slicer to produce the digital output. It will also need extremely careful PCB design (as it will easily become unstable), and will almost certainly need to be in a screened enclosure.
Perhaps you should read my PIC tutorials?, one of those is about IR remote control - and shows how simple it is to generate 38KHz. However, you should be aware that you can't simply send serial data over an IR link (the widths of the pulses doesn't transfer properly). My tutorial uses the Sony SIRC's system, you could easily use that to send data - however, it is fairly slow.
can't actually get you tut's cause i use different cind of laguage and dont know that(yet)
but that 555 thingy... how do you thint this should be done? i mahe a 555 schem and give power to it using a transistor and pic? or does it have enable pin? I haven't worked with them so i dont really get those litte fellows
You build an 555 timer oscilator like shown in the datasheet and get software to caculate the caps and resistors to tune it to 38KHz.conect an IR LED to the output and insted of puling to reset (pin 4) to Vdd you conect it to your PICs output (directly whih no trasistors)
so wenn the PICs output goes high the timer will begin to oscilate.
It only needs a few microamps to pull it up
this way you dont need transistors to switch the power to the whole thing you only start/stop the oscilaton
To try it out simply wire the reset pin of the timer to Vdd (whith no PIC conected) and give the detector IC power and hook up an LED to its output pin.So wen you pint the IR LED at it the recivers LED sod thurn on/off (when you conect/disconect the reset pin)
if it works them conect it to the PICs and try to comunicate.
cable is no option and IrDa is far to expencive for me (4 times as much as a good pic)
and i dont need to transfer data fast. i just need to transfer it so tht both pic's understand that they have communicated... now all i need to do is to go to my nearest suplyer and get a 555 and some caps and put them all together and report my answers to you then