Can't connect with Novatel 3G PCMCIA modem

What works, and doesn't, for you. Be specific, and please include Puppy version.
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evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

Can't connect with Novatel 3G PCMCIA modem

#1 Post by evil »

Hi,

I have a Novatel 3G PCMCIA card and I have tried connecting to the modem using puppy linux but for some resaon It always fails to connect.
The card is identified when I type cardctl ident and it is mounted to the serial port COM3 i.e ttyS0 as seen under dmesg.
I send the exact AT commands through a serial port ttyS0 and it connects fine with an mc35i terminal modem and I get a gprs connection but as soon as I try with the pcmcia it fails.
I know I have 3G signal cause blue light is flashing.
I cant understand why.....any clues or advice.

Many thanks in advance....

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

Xeznet

#2 Post by skipperjim »

Try configuring your dialup with Xeznet. The regular puppy dialup didn't work for my PCMCIA modem either. However Xeznet brings it up flawlessly.

Go to: Start, Network, Xeznet - - k "Add" and put in your info. The tty blank doesn't need an entry. Baud is 115200. k "OK"

k the dialup listing you just created, k "Up" and enjoy. You can make multiple dialup entries and k the one you want. My ISP has two different dialup numbers for two different hardware types. With Xeznet I can try both.

Good Luck, Skipperjim

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#3 Post by evil »

Just seen your reply Skipperjim.
Thanks a lot. I will try that later this avo as I'm not by my puppy at the moment!

1 question:
What do you mean by 'K'? and 'k the dialup listing you just created'??

I'm lost on this 'K' term that keeps popping up!!

In the baudrate, do I type
'115200' or
'115200. K OK' or.....sorry if it's a silly question!

Thanks again
evil

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

"k"

#4 Post by skipperjim »

Sorry about that. "k" is my personal shorthand for ?right clicking the mouse."
I got tired of writing out the word "select" or "right click" in notes to myself so I came up with the personal shorthand of "k." Wherever you see a "k" you can substitute the word "select."

Good luck. Xeznet worked so well that it would pick up the PCMCIA modem without even running the puppy modem wizard. I was impressed.

Good luck:
Skipperjim

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#5 Post by evil »

My Xeznet doesn't send anything through the serial port!
I have tested it through hyperterminal aswell to confirm this.

Is your PCMCIA a network card? or is it a modem? i.e are you connectiong to wifi hot spots or are you connecting to e.g Orange gprs and 3G???

Anyway, I have tried just dialling on gsm and still nothing through the serial port (even if I do define it ttyS0).
Why is this do you have any clues? I am using puppy 1.0.6 and booting off a compact flash of 128MB in to a 256MB RAM.
Another dialup program simply crashes puppy altogether as soon as I select port scan for devise search.

I am trying to connect to Orange UMTS ultimately which have the same AT commands as gprs I take it.
BUT just to test, I am trying to dial up to Orange gsm. I i/p the isp which is orange.net, and the phone number and username + password with Baud rate 19200. That's it. Then I click on 'up' and the status sAys 'dialling' but nothing happens!!
I can't locate my diald? Is that a problem??

Is there another program i could download to try dialling with????

Let me know if you have any clues
Thanks again, much appreciated.

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

Bad Puppies need obediance school.

#6 Post by skipperjim »

I read your response and I can't really comment into that so I'll just tell you what I've done.

I use the mandrake installation program to partition this hard drive. Mandrake has a great gui partitioning program. So the hard drive has two equal size partitions with a 200meg or so swap space in between them. I installed Puppy 1.0.7 on the first, hda1, and Puppy 1.0.8 on the second, hda6. Swap is on hda5.

Puppy 1.0.7 downloads and installs the linmodem. So it can use the winmodem that's part of the computer. I downloaded the linmodem with the PCMCIA us robotics modem. However so far I can't get sound to work.

Puppy 1.0.8 will download the linmodem, but the installation fails so I can only use the PCMCIA modem when I boot into it on hda6. But Puppy 1.0.8 installs an Alsa sound driver and sound works really well.

So there are differences between the Puppies. One of them may run everything perfectly. I bought an US Robotics externat serial port modem and both Puppies see that modem and use it with Xeznet. Dialup on the desktop won't bring either one up... Go figure.

The alpha testers are using the live cd to get the bugs worked out, that could be another option for you. Get live cd's for 1.0.7, 1.0.8 and 2.0 and see if one of them works for you. The proprietary nature of computers and control by the evil empire can foil any good attempts at ressurection.

Good luck: Maybe we'll get something going here.

Skipperjim

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#7 Post by evil »

Notice you mentioned to get live cd on puppy2.0.

Where can I download the iso image for puppy2.0 from?? I heard it was out but I can't find it anywhere!! Have you got a link I can visit to download it?

I'll try 1.0.8 in the mean time...

thanks

SnowDog
Posts: 312
Joined: Thu 05 Jan 2006, 19:24
Location: Manitoba Canada
Contact:

Another Dialler

#8 Post by SnowDog »

Is there another program i could download to try dialling with????
I found wvdial to work with a pcmcia card when no others would.
It should be in /usr/bin/wvdialshell so you can get a desktop icon by drag & drop.
Also:
In case you are not observant (like I was-nt)
When you launch wvdialshell, it will bring up a little dialog box that informs you that it's detecting the modem.
After it has detected one...it will display a dial-up dialog that has spaces to put your isp's phone #, u-name & password (fill in as appropriate)
BUT...make sure you remove the little semicolons at the beginning of each of these lines. Then click save and it should dial out.
The only thing I don't love about wvdial, is that it saves the password in plain text. There's probably a way around that...I just haven't looked.
Hope it helps
If you find my posts helpful and you want to say thanks, please consider clicking the www button under my posts to visit my website.

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

wvdial

#9 Post by skipperjim »

wvdial is also in the start menu: Start, Network, wvdial

good luck

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

Puppy2

#10 Post by skipperjim »

Evil; Did you get an e-mail for Puppy2 alpha? I had to leave and for some reason clicked the e-mail button. I have great hopes for Puppy2; I hope I get sound and have the Lucent modem too. According to the news the Lucent modem will be included and will not have to be downloaded.

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#11 Post by evil »

Just checked my trash can on hotmail and go ur email on puppy2.0!! That was a fluke! Y did it end up in the trash I dont know.

I dot the pcmcia working. Chose not to use any gui to configure the scripts. I just wrote my own chatscript and peer and then ran it from the command line: .../sbin pppd call chatscript_name
Then use .../bin/killall pppd to disconnect.
I tested my 3g connection and I get about 116K which is about 1/2 the theoretical value of 364K!! Still much better than gsm or gprs though!!

I'll let you know how I get on with the site you sent me...
cheers guys

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

Sound

#12 Post by skipperjim »

This is off topic: but I just got ess18xx sound to work in Puppy !.0.7. Now it has everything and is a very nice Puppy. I wrote the Parameters for "sb" and it worked. I have yet to see if it will come back after a re-boot.

But evil: I have yet to buy a Wifi card. I would like to get one that Puppy will load automatically. Any suggestions?

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#13 Post by evil »

I initially got an Orange FUSION pcmcia modem card that has wi-fi built in to it which sounds great. BUT it isn't recognised under puppy or redhat or slackware or.....
Seems like it has no linux support (yet) unless you dwell in the world of writing your own drivers!! I'm far from that at the moment!!
Anyway, I settled for the Novatel inthe end as you know.

I can recommend you the NETGEAR 802.11b wireless PC card (16-bit PCMCIA model MA401) as I have just plugged it in and puppy reckognised it!!

I tried to get puppy2 from the link you gave me. It is a torent file and when I try and download the files there is a http error 404. Will try again....

I have a question in return!! Have you manage to watch video on puppy? I want something like Quicktime. Basically I want to be able to go on line and download video where a multimedia player loads up and displays video. Puppy has Gxine I think but does that play MPEG4?? I want it to be able to play MPEG4.

Congrats with the sound!!...I will try to get sound working too

Regards...
Evil

skipperjim
Posts: 10
Joined: Wed 21 Dec 2005, 17:11
Location: Portland, Oregon

Video

#14 Post by skipperjim »

Sir Evil:

We're going off topic (maybe) so I sent you an e-mail. I sent a response this morning also, but the computer crashed while sending (yes of course it was a Windows machine). This note and the next are from Puppy.

Cao

mortlocl
Posts: 56
Joined: Tue 07 Jun 2005, 00:17
Location: christchurch - new zealand

some PCMCIA modems only work in wndows.

#15 Post by mortlocl »

I got my pcmcia modem to work using Wvdial which is what SnowDog suggested.

My PCMCIA modem was an old Psion type one. We discovered some of the newer PCMCIA modems don't work..and wondered if they were winmodems..as the packaging specified only windows.
mortlocl

evil
Posts: 55
Joined: Sun 20 Nov 2005, 00:25

#16 Post by evil »

Mortlocl:
From my experience I'd coclude that the latest pcmcia modem cards aren't supported by linux or atleast kernel 2.4.......maybe 2.6 will support them.

My OPTION FUSION card hasn't worked under a number of linux distributions I tried.

The older Novatel works great though.

My OPTION FUSION is a wireless card aswell as a modem which is why I initially favoured this card but maybe this confused linux OS on what drivers to associate with the card somehow..............just a guess!!

Orange only use OPTION FUSION now, not Novatel cards.

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