Zugschlusbeobachtungen

Today, I had the opportunity to try my UMTS initialization mechanism that I built this weekend with more recent hardware, a newer Option Globetrotter 3G Express Card with Vodafone branding (reporting itself to be a “Globetrotter HSDPA Modem” with Vendor ID 0xaf0 and Product ID 0x6701). To get the card connected to my test Notebook, a hp compaq nc8000, I had a “Expresscard in a PC card slot” adapter and a passive “Expresscard at a normal USB port” adapter. The USB adapter had cost about ten Euros, and I don’t imagine the PC card adapter to be much more expensive.

For mobile UMTS/GSM, I have been using an Option 3G Data Card for two and a half years now. I blogged about getting the card to work (in German, sorry) on Linux in July 2005. I never found the time - until now - to automate the card initialization so that I had been using a horrible chat script for card initialization when the PPP connection was built.

I recently took the time to automate this, so that the PIN is transmitted to the card automatically when the card is plugged in. This article documents what I did.

On a side note: Unfortunately, the vendors’ attitude towards Linux hasn’t changed since 2005. Their Hotlines still deny that their products can be used with Linux at all, and they surely do not publish any documentation that can be of help. Otoh, Vodafone has published a software that supposedly aids usage of their products under Linux. I haven’t tried it yet since it is not packaged yet for Debian. Additionally, Vodafone support media and sales do not seem to know about this effort, they still deny that their products work with Linux. Windows users happily install proprietary software products that do little more than sending a handful of AT commands to the emulated USB modem and hand over the connection to Windows’ PPP Stack. A very unsatisfying situation.

Just for the record: Dear Vodafone DE, a week ago you missed the sale of a new USB UMTS interface because you don’t even document it on Linux. This motivated me to look into the drawer that holds the old, non-HSDPA PC cards that have been decommissioned at the customers’ site and use an old, used device. Your fault.