Anyone have a pcmcia wireless modem card working?

john36

The kind that you log into a cellular ISP with.

I have a Sony Ericson GC83 that connects with Cingular.
(under GSM/GPRS)
Runs fine under windows, but obviously, I'd like to get it going under Gentoo.

I tried some google searches and couldnt find much useful stuff.

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

john36 · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 6:10 pm Post subject:

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

[quote="john36"][quote]
Well "cardctl status" tells me that something is going on.
/quote]

What does syslog say when you plug it in?

john36 · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 7:42 pm Post subject:

Here's the tail end of syslog:

john36 · Posted: Wed Nov 03, 2004 9:27 pm Post subject:

Hey Raffi,

I got it working. Thanks for the help.

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

Sorry to try and resurrect the dead thread.0

I have a GC83, but I haven't been given an e-mail address or password. Do I need to get one? Mine takes a SIM card -- same with yours, right?

john36: What did you do to get yours working? Do you recommend a particular site?

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

The information posted above should work for you as well. The same login is used for everyone, the security is through registering the card and paying your bills.

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

i'm having trouble getting started. dmesg shows that my card is recognized, but i'm not quite sure what to do next. do i reconfigure the /etc/init.d/net.ppp0 script using the corresponding conf.d/net.ppp0 configuration file? That's what I did. I left all the defaults, and just made the following changes:

PEER="cingular"
MODEMPORT="/dev/ttyS2"
LINESPEED="230400"
AUTOCFGFILES="no"
AUTOCHATSCRIPT="no"

I used the above settings and put the chat-gc82 file and the cingular file in the proper directories.

Did you guys start ppp and execute pppd directly rather than using the init script? If so, how do you do that?

Thanks =)

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

I did not use the net.ppp0 script. I just setup a peer file in /etc/ppp/peers/cingular and and chat script in /etc/ppp/somename and used the command

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

I am so close that it hurts!! Thanks for the great and timely help Raffi. It looks like the connection is getting terminiated after the IPCP request is sent. I have tried both the proxy and the cingular_isp mode. Any idea on what could be causing this?

This is the verbose output of pppd (debug enabled):

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

The good news is it looks like everything is working as it should. You probably have a service that does not permit the data acceleration. Try changing the ISPDA@CINGULARGPRS.COM to ISP@CINGULARGPRS.COM and turning off all of the different compression types.

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

It didn't work after I disabled compression. I could tell that compression was disabled because I didn't see the "compress xx xx xx" codes in the IPCP which was sent. The same problem occurred: "LCP term" requests were sent by the peer in response to my IPCP requests.

I also tried changing 'ISPDA' to 'ISP', and I tried both cingular.wap and proxy for the APN. I am going to do some more searching and create a very detailed output for my configuration files using other people's attempts and the man pages.

I am thankful for your help Raffi, but it's time for me to do my part. Ideally, I want to make a detailed, commented script which can be used by me and users with other linux distros. If I have the time, I will try to expand this to other pieces of hardware too. There are many combinations with regard to compression types, APNs, init commands, and pppd options. It's about time that I started a journal with what I have and have not tried. I will publish my findings to the AT&T forums too.

Hopefully that will help me pull my weight in the open source world =) I'll keep you posted on my progress.

pentium120 · n00b Joined: 14 Jan 2005 Posts: 29

So I got it working =)

It took me awhile to get back to you since I was putting together a HOWTO. It's not very universal yet, but I'm working on it. Of course, your name is mentioned. If you're curious, you can visit:

http://www.advantedgecomputing.com/opensource/gc83linux.html
_________________
Open Source Projects:
advantedgecomputing.com/opensource

Wireless (Cellular) Internet access---
Sony Ericsson GC83 on Linux:
advantedgecomputing.com/opensource/gc83linux.html

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

I know this is an old thread, but I am having the exact error message that you have:

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

This looks like a compression issue again. The connection closed is right after negotiating compression. Try turning it off or finding a login that allows for compression.

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

alright, here is my whole log of my dialing sequence:

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

Thank you very much for your help so far. Here are my files:

peers:

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

Well that looks pretty good. Are you sure your WAP.CINGULAR username is correct? Have you tried the one provided above? I would exepct the username to at least need an @CINGULARGPRS.COM at the end.

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

my UN is WAP@CINGULARGPRS.COM
my APN is wap.cingular

I know that those are correct, as I have used them in windows, and it works fine. I am not sure about the CGDCONT number, though.

edit: I notice that most people who get a connection do not have

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

So let's try going the other way and turning on some of the compression. It is closing the connection during the negotiation so it must not like something it is seeing.

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

what is <addr 0.0.0.0> ? I would like to turn that off, just to try. I have disabled the dns options, but no change. I will try with different/all compressions on, and post up if I get anything different.

Raffi · l33t Joined: 17 Mar 2003 Posts: 731 Location: Moscow, Id.

0.0.0.0 means any address. It should allow for the address to be set by the other end. This used to be a problem because some providers set it to something strange like 127.0.0.2.

alpha_maverick · n00b Joined: 16 Jul 2007 Posts: 11

is <addr x.x.x.x> a request for a specific address, and using 0.0.0.0 is asking for any address? If so, is there a way to disable that? I would like to try it without that option, as every successful script I have seen does not have that in the IPCP request line.

edit: enabling certain compression(s) yields:

sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <deflate 15> <deflate(old#) 15>]
or
sent [CCP ConfReq id=0x1 <bsd v1 15>]

between IPCP request and TermReq