Category: Hardware

I gave Roxane my old digital camera for Christmas (I got a new little Olympus FE-115), so I went shopping at several local stores for a 32-64MB MMC card for it… No luck – no one carries them anymore…

A quick search gave me a few options for online purchase, and the best seemed to be at www.Flash-Memory-Store.com – a quick order process, and I have a new SanDisk 32MB MMC on the way! Looks like they have just about every imaginable flash card ever produced, and all the smaller sizes, which nobody seems to stock any longer. Worth a try if you need an older card!

Got my hands on a SprintPCS Sierra Wireless AirCard 595 for testing out connectivity under linux (Xubuntu 6.10, to be precise (and now Debian Etch)) – works perfectly 🙂

Plug the card in, and dmesg should show similar to:

[17188167.136000] pccard: CardBus card inserted into slot 0
[17188167.212000] ohci_hcd: 2005 April 22 USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver (PCI)
[17188167.216000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:16:00.0 (0000 -> 0002)
[17188167.216000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:16:00.0[A] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
[17188167.216000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:16:00.0 to 64
[17188167.216000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.0: OHCI Host Controller
[17188167.216000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 6
[17188167.216000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.0: irq 169, io mem 0xe6000000
[17188167.300000] usb usb6: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[17188167.300000] hub 6-0:1.0: USB hub found
[17188167.300000] hub 6-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[17188167.404000] PCI: Enabling device 0000:16:00.1 (0000 -> 0002)
[17188167.404000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:16:00.1[B] -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 169
[17188167.404000] PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:16:00.1 to 64
[17188167.404000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.1: OHCI Host Controller
[17188167.404000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.1: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 7
[17188167.404000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.1: irq 169, io mem 0xe6001000
[17188167.488000] usb usb7: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
[17188167.488000] hub 7-0:1.0: USB hub found
[17188167.488000] hub 7-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[17188168.532000] ohci_hcd 0000:16:00.0: wakeup
[17188168.916000] usb 6-1: new full speed USB device using ohci_hcd and address 2
[17188169.128000] usb 6-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice

In order to use it as a modem, we need to find the vendor and product ID’s and fire up the USB serial device, as follows:

mshuler@kokopelli:~$ lsusb
Bus 006 Device 002: ID 1199:0019 Sierra Wireless, Inc.
...
mshuler@kokopelli:~$ sudo modprobe usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019

Another check of dmesg should show:

[17188531.644000] usbcore: registered new driver usbserial
[17188531.648000] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial support registered for generic
[17188531.648000] usbserial_generic 6-1:1.0: generic converter detected
[17188531.648000] usb 6-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB0
[17188531.648000] usb 6-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB1
[17188531.648000] usb 6-1: generic converter now attached to ttyUSB2
[17188531.648000] usbcore: registered new driver usbserial_generic
[17188531.648000] drivers/usb/serial/usb-serial.c: USB Serial Driver core

In /etc/modprobe.d/options I added the following line so that the module loads up automagically:

options usbserial vendor=0x1199 product=0x0019

Set up peer and chat scripts and start PPP – I have been using the following, flawlessly, this afternoon:

mshuler@kokopelli:~$ cat /etc/ppp/peers/sprint
# You usually need this if there is no PAP authentication
noauth
# The chat script
connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/peers/sprint_chat"
# Set up routing to go through this PPP link
defaultroute
# Use remote DNS
usepeerdns
# Default modem
/dev/ttyUSB0
# Connect at high speed
230400
local
novj
lcp-echo-failure 4
lcp-echo-interval 65535
mshuler@kokopelli:~$ cat /etc/ppp/peers/sprint_chat
TIMEOUT 5
ABORT '\nBUSY\r'
ABORT '\nERROR\r'
ABORT '\nNO ANSWER\r'
ABORT '\nNO CARRIER\r'
ABORT '\nNO DIALTONE\r'
ABORT '\nRINGING\r\n\r\nRINGING\r'
'' \rAT
TIMEOUT 12
OK ATD#777
TIMEOUT 60
CONNECT ""
mshuler@kokopelli:~$ pon sprint

/var/log/syslog should show similar to:

Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli pppd[7175]: pppd 2.4.4 started by mshuler, uid 1000
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: timeout set to 5 seconds
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nBUSY\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nERROR\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nNO ANSWER\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nNO CARRIER\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nNO DIALTONE\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: abort on (\nRINGING\r\n\r\nRINGING\r)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: send (^MAT^M)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: timeout set to 12 seconds
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: expect (OK)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: ^M
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: OK
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: -- got it
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: send (ATD#777^M)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: timeout set to 60 seconds
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: expect (CONNECT)
Dec 5 17:02:56 kokopelli chat[7177]: ^M
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli chat[7177]: ^M
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli chat[7177]: CONNECT
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli chat[7177]: -- got it
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli chat[7177]: send (^M)
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli pppd[7175]: Serial connection established.
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli pppd[7175]: Using interface ppp0
Dec 5 17:03:00 kokopelli pppd[7175]: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/ttyUSB0
Dec 5 17:03:01 kokopelli pppd[7175]: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
Dec 5 17:03:01 kokopelli pppd[7175]: local IP address 68.241.119.149
Dec 5 17:03:01 kokopelli pppd[7175]: remote IP address 68.28.177.69
Dec 5 17:03:01 kokopelli pppd[7175]: primary DNS address 68.28.178.11
Dec 5 17:03:01 kokopelli pppd[7175]: secondary DNS address 68.28.186.11

Happy roaming!