3G WWAN support working on the 4G Eee

I finally wrested away the Asus from my son after recording our brief video overview and made some headway today on a few fronts. First up, I had been mucking about with the file systems and scripts in order to get my HSDPA modem working, so I decided to start with a clean slate. Besides, it’s always good to get a feel for the factory restore process on any mobile device; if you’re out and about but have a total system failure, you don’t want that to be the first time you try the restore process. The procedure for the Asus Eee PC was unlike any I’d ever executed…

Like most of my other mobile devices, the Eee gives you a choice to restore from a CD-ROM or from a hidden system partition. I chose the CD for this test and it was really no different than any other process I’d done in the past: set the BIOS to boot from the CD, reboot, and follow the prompts. So what was different? The time it took, since I was completely factory restored in about five minutes. Sure at that point you’d have to restore applications and data, but it was amazing to me that in five short minutes, I was back to "out of the box" specs. I may look into attempting this again with the hidden partition as I’m thinking it might speed up the process, but really: five minutes exceeds my expectations.

With my clean slate, I decided to tackle the Sierra Wireless 875U AirCard again. In fact, I was about to ping Matt, who kindly left a comment on the post from my last attempt. He indicated that the drivers for my modem should already be installed and that the card should be recognized by the connection wizard. Well, no such luck on the connection wizard part, but he was right about the drivers. Right before I shot Matt a note, I found a recent entry on the EeeUser Asus Eee PC forums that got me over the hurdle. According to this entry, I just needed to uncomment two lines in the gsm_chat script at ./etc/ppp/peers.

Of course, there was a minor problem following those directions to the letter. I found the first line to comment out just fine, but not the second. I was looking for this line to uncomment: #OK   ’AT+CGDCONT=1, "IP","ISP.CINGULAR"’ No such luck although there were very similar lines for the Access Point Name (APN). Since I couldn’t find the exact line I needed to uncomment, I commented out all of the other APN settings lines and then added a new line for my entry.

From there, it was simply a matter of initiating a call through my EDGE / HSDPA modem with this command: pppd call gsm. Sure enough, the modem dialed out and I was surfing on my Eee via the 3G USB modem!

A few items are worth mentioning with the current working solution, which isn’t quite perfect yet:

• I have to set up a shortcut to call to the pppd call gsm command. As it stands now, I have to open up a Console session and manually run the command.
• Ideally, I’d like to see the connection wizard recognize the modem, so it can be configured and used through the GUI, just like all other connections. I’ve asked Matt for help on that.
• I originally thought I’d need to keep the Console session open the entire time while using the 3G modem, but I’ve closed it and the connection has stayed active. Don’t open the connection wizard however; all bets are off after that.

Regardless of these minor annoyances, the Eee is now a much more mobile solution as I don’t need to depend on WiFi at home or hotspots while out. Will most Eee users use this type of solution? Doubtful since the target audience of the Eee likely doesn’t have a 3G plan nor equipment. For the few folks that want an Eee as a light use, mobile sub-notebook, this should get you one step closer.