My quest for the perfect wireless world

So after my unplesent experience with CDMA, and the difficulty of carrying a full fledged phone around all the time (I even took it to Blue waters last week), just to satisfy my online cravings, I decided to take a plunge and upgrade my cell phone.

Those who have seen my old cell phone know how ugly it looks, with bits of colors torn from the cover and the keypad virtually erased (well, ok .... most of gadgets end up looking so), wouldn't second guess that it was about time I upgraded.

After flirting around with the new Nokia 6230i, I decided she was too expensive for my purse, and decided to go with the next best thing – the SE K700i. Thanks to my friend Asanga and his underground contacts, I managed to get a decent price (I think).

Well after charging it for a good 2.5 hrs, which gave me some time to skip through the manual, I got right down to business – with Linux ofcourse.

Since my notebook doesn't have inbuilt support for Bluetooth, I used the IR port instead. Irda is fairly well supported in Linux, except when it comes to enhanced modes that are specific to the IR chip. Unfortunately, my IR chip isn't detected by the findchip tool.

Nevertheless, using IR to emulate a standard COM port is how I generally connect the two. Tools such as irdadump and irdaping are useful when it comes to debugging the connection.

Transferring files to and from was quite a breeze (as usual), using the command line tools such as ircp, irxfer and obexftp. The challenge was connecting via GPRS. Thanks to google, I was able to quickly find details of how to set that up. Even though there are no drivers for my Irda chip, using the irtty_sir module, it turns out, I can still connect, thanks to serial emulation!


Here is the wvdial.conf I used to connect to Dialog


[Dialer Dialog]
Modem = /dev/ircomm0
Baud = 57600
SetVolume = 0
Dial Command = ATDT
Init1 = ATZ
Init3 = ATM0
FlowControl = crtscts
Username = ""
Password = ""
Phone = *99***1#
Stupid Mode = 1


Next I wanted to check if GPRSEasy Connect could do the same and sure enough, by selecting Sri Lanka – Dialog from the drop down provider list (yup, they know we exist!), and selecting SE K700 (700i wasn't in the list – but then again, my software version is old), I was able to easily connect.

gprseasy

So there you have it folks - everything works, and I didn't have to install a single third party driver. GNU/Linux rocks!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why KDE4 (might) suck!

Image
I've been a kde user for very long time, since from before version 3.0. I vaguely remember being excited with version 3.0 to the point I was using the beta releases on a daily basis. Similarly I have been anticipating kde 4.0, the next major release since 3.0 I suppose. But it seems that is just its problem! Its too much of a major release to be pushing out in such a hurry. I have been following kde 4 from time to time by reading some of the discussions on the panel-devel list, trying out the alpha releases via the SUSE live cd and of course discussing with Siraj , our local kde developer, on the internals (technology and community wise). While things have improved a bit, with each release of kde 4, its far from ready. We are now at RC1 and the announcement says its ready for prime time testing. Building on this, the majority of applications included in KDE 4.0 are now usable for day to day use. The KDE Release Team has recently underlined this by calling on the community to par...
Read more

Track Your New Year Resolutions With ii.do

Image
I know, I know, it’s a bit of a cheesy title to promote my Open Source project but here me out - it really does work. Though I didn’t really write it to track my new year resolutions (I’ve never found them effective beyond a week), I did write it out of constant frustration with not finding a TODO productivity tool that stuck with me. Let me explain… I’ve tried EVERYTHING! Google Calendar & tasks Sending myself Emails Wiki (Dokuwiki, Mediwiki, Twiki etc.) Tomboy Tomboy with UbuntuOne & Android App EverNote Remember the Milk Gedit notes on my desktop Post-it notes widget Actual Post-it notes Old-skool diary Pieces of paper including backs of payment receipts From the above list, if anything came remotely to sticking as a habit, then it’d be the sticky notes & pieces of paper. I’m not suggesting the other methods suck, but I wouldn’t use it beyond a couple of weeks. Why was it that despite me spending hours on a computer, the best thing that had a chance of r...
Read more

I want my CDMA! How my rights were violated.

Last Wednesday, I went to pick up a CDMA phone from Bell after hearing all good about it and how fast it was. I had been using Bell for now over 5 years, primarily to surf the Internet. Sure it wasn't fast at 33.6, but atleast it was the next best economical thing until ADSL shows up. Naturally when CDMA came along with a lower rental and a 5x claimed speed, it did raise my eye browse. But I had already invested 15,000/- on my current phone, which included paying the old owner his phone deposit of 7500 and another 7500 for the phone transfer. Still, I was paying 600+ on rental alone and wasn't using the two lines that came with it that much. After waiting and rethinking for about two months and checking on ADSL, I decided to bite the bullet and go for CDMA, while disconnecting the old line. Boy! was I in for a surprise as I left to the Bell head office It seemed as if I had committed the ultimate sin, by asking that they disconnect the old phone, while I buy another brand new ...
Read more