08/18/07
First things first ...
I work on a golf course and our shop is a trailer and I couldn't tie up the phone line plus it is so slow and I can not stand to wait so what to do. I had heard about these air cards but with the state of linux and wireless I was not sure I could find a working card. Thanks to Kevin Lloyd at Sierra Wireless I have a working connection. I hope someone can use this little *How I Did It*
I bought the card at AT&T and it is not cheap. The service is 79.99 a month plus some fees bring it to about 90. On the good side it is pretty fast, about DSL speed. In the link at the top is the guide Kevin put together and you need to read that and download the scripts and the driver. Make SURE you read it first, all I had to do was understand what was going on. That is where the how to may help someone.
The Laptop ...
I shopped around for a laptop and settled on a Toshiba a205 because it was a good price, and I liked the look of it and the amdx2 cpu. First thing I did was put 2 gig of ram in it and it is just fine thank you.
I do wish it had a nvidia card but oh well I can deal with it, in fact the ati driver installed fine. I am not goint to use beryl anyway unless it gets more stabe. This laptop is goint to be used for the web and email and it is fine for that. I will also do some office stuff and store some stuff on it. I tried to install my favorite distro Gentoo but for some reason it just could not connect to the internet so that was out. I think the kernel was too old because the is a new model laptop the needs a current kernel. You must pass the option in lilo.conf append="nolapic_timer" and for grub at the end of the kernel line. Here is a picture of the laptop.
The Driver ...
The latest driver at the writing is the v.1.2.5c. The link to it is at the top sierra.c. I just downloaded the driver from Kevins Sierra Guide and replaced the seirra.c file and ran make then make install. That updated the driver. Kevin helped me out, it was nice of him to answer my mails.
config files
Here are the two important files inside /etc/ppp/peers/ from Kevins scripts to connect. Now these are for AT&T Cingular
Connecting with ppp ...
I tried using kppp but it just would not work on Slackware 12. I may not have done it right or I think it is just buggy. It would lock up. So I used Kevens scripts and once I figured out what to put in the it worked fine. I did notice that if I connected and disconnected to much then I was unable to connect until I waited a few hours. I just leave it connected now, hay I am paying for it. I tried doing the same thing in windows and it woul reset the modem and then it was able to connect, but I don't know how to do that. I guess I could ask Keven. Anyway here is what a successful connection looks like.
If you need help you can find me at the forum link at the top.
