I just tried out a Sanyo 8200 last night with my Linux laptop and confirmed that it, like the Sanyo 4900 and friends, works great for data access under Linux using Sprint's PCS Vision service.
Thanks goes out to Greg Danielius (despam the address) for his report of Linux compatilibity for the Sanyo MM-7400 phone. It works for data access under Linux with Sprint's PCS Vision service. Report posted in the list.
Just added the Nokia 3588i to the database of Sprint Phones known to work with Linux for data access. The info comes from a post over at PeerFear
I just added up a compatibility report to the list of Sprint Phones known to work with Linux for data access, specifically for the Sanyo RL-4920. I tested it personally with the data cable I use with my 4900 and it worked great.
Another big thanks goes out to Wijay Kesuma for a on the Samsung N400. This Vision compatible phone works great with Linux with the same cable that the A460 uses. Thanks, Wijay!
Wijaya Kesuma emailed me with a link to his excellent writeup on setting up data access in GNU/Linux with a Samsung A460. This phone uses Sprints older, 2G data service, with slower data rates. I've added this writeup to my list of Sprint phones known to work with Sprint data access with Linux.
Sitting around over the holidays, away from a reliable internet connection has made a good opportunity to kick around the wireless connection I have via my Sanyo 4900. As Brian Jepson at Mobile Whack points out, unreliable is the key word. The connection is just barely enough for some basic tasks—but not much more than that. No streaming music yet.
Newsmonster over this link is pretty painful but it can be done. Strangely enough, I've been having problems with Newsmonster and the latest kernel I built, 2.4.23. I get all kinds of DNS timeouts, even on a real link. I haven't had the time to chase the root of the problem down, though.
I just put up a compatibility report for the Samsung VGA1000. It works under Linux as modem (acm device) for wireless internet access. Just get a USB cable and you are good to go.
I've put together a small set of compatibility reports for using Sprint cell phones for Internet access under Linux. If you have used a model not listed here to get data access with our favorite operating system, please drop me a line and let me know. My email address can be found at the bottom of the page, obfuscated against spammers.
I'm at my parents' house for Thanksgiving, enjoying the food and family times. However, being the geek I am, I've been trying to get connected all day. My Sprint PCS Vision service has been returning network errors all day—I don't know what the deal is. Only just now have I been able to establish a connection, either on the phone directly or from my laptop.
Whatever was causing the problem, I'm wired now, so this is the first real test of my roadblogging setup. Happy Thanksgiving from the road.
I'm still looking for a camera phone that I can use under Linux for wireless internet access without any extra funky hardware or software. I've been eyeing the Sanyo SCP-8100 for an option, as my SCP-4900 works extremely well for this. However, I've held back because I can't find much report of anyone successfully using an 8100 with Linux.
Until today. I found two examples of people supposedly getting an 8100 working as a usb acm modem with Linux. Checkout Lukewarm's SCP-8100 page and Frank E. Harrell's Linux Setup Notes for two examples.
I'm glad to say that the Sanyo-SCP 8100 is 100% supported under Linux. I spoke with Frank Harrell directly (link above) and he confirmed its operation with Knoppix. Now I just have to get one.
I was wrong when I mentioned before that the integrated wireless on my Thinkpad G40 wasn't supported under Linux. Turns out it is. I'm still struggling to get it working but I do believe it is supported.
Trying to get it working, I first tried the wlan-ng driver which claims to support this built-in, PCI wireless device. Debian comes with the wlan-ng driver and utilities prepackaged. You must get the linux-wlan-ng package, along with the appropriate linux-wlan-ng-modules-* package for your kernel. If you use a custom kernel, you must apt-get source linux-wlan-ng in your /usr/src/modules directory and make sure to build it when you build your kernel. See my page on building a custom kernel under debian with make-kpkg for instructions on how to build modules (like pcmcia-cs-modules and linux-wlan-ng-modules).
This almost worked except that the prism2_pci driver segfaulted on me when I tried to use it. Disabling PCI Bus Control under Power Management in the BIOS of this G40 helped a bit, but it never got it working.
Still not knowing what to do, I tried good old Knoppix. Knoppix autodetected my wireless automagically, using the orinoco_pci driver for support. Worked great, or as best as I can tell anyway without a WAP. The little wireless light on my laptop started blinking and iwconfig gave comforting output indicating the device was working.
So now I'm trying recompile my kernel in Debian to use the orinoco_pci driver, as it did not before. I believe the appropriate option is HERMES_PCI or something similar. It has been a headache but at least the onboard wireless is supported. More when I get this working.
What should have been an easy task ended up a night-long series of recompiles, but in the end, I think I have it working. For some reason, compiling pcmcia_cs modules with make-kpkg started failing on me, with a compile error. I think it was caused by some kernel header file. Instead of using it, I changed my config to include pcmcia modules directly from the main kernel tree. Doing this, I had to change the PCIC line in /etc/default/pcmcia to be yenta_socket instead of i82365, but other than that, it worked nicely. Now I can modprobe orinoco_pci and iwconfig outputs the following.
eth1 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"" Nickname:"Prism I"Mode:Managed Frequency:2.467GHz Access Point:44:44:44:44:44:44 Bit Rate:11Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm Sensitivity:1/242700000Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:offPower Management:off Link Quality:0/1 Signal level:-68 dBm Noise level:-122 dBmRx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0Now I just need a WAP and I should be good to go I think. Have a look at my kernel config file if you have a need.
It's been a busy damn week here—work is still running me ragged and I've been spending my evenings setting up my new laptop. All of the core components except the integrated wireless and modem are supported with open source drivers; I will be putting up a compatibility report soon. In the mean time, if you have an IBM Thinkpad G40 and you are looking to make it work under Debian GNU/Linux, have a look at these hints.
My employer offers a program to purchase computer hardware interest-free through paycheck deduction. They specify a few places I could order from, and one of them pcmall.com has the exact laptop I want, the IBM Thinkpad R40—pretty fucking nice. It would go great with a wireless internet connection.
I just found out that I'm not eligible for this program until a bit later this month, on the day that I have been with my current employer one full year. Kind of a disappointment but at least I'm motivated to shop a bit more.
Radiation from the cell will erase the mind
I had a few minutes to play with that Sanyo data cable I got a while back. Now I'm posting this from my cell. With just a bit of kernel-tweaking and these fantastic instructions, I'm ballin' with a wireless connection via my Sanyo-4900. Who can stop me now?
Damn it has been a busy day and I've been up to quite a bit. You'll probably notice that all of the blog entries at LAB-Y now have category links. Follow any of them to search for entries that fall under the specified category. Just a smidgen of PHP and another feature falls out of the sky.
I went ahead and ordered my Sanyo SCP-4900 to eventually have wireless internet access under Linux from anywhere. It only set me back $170 (which included tax and an inflated shipping cost, fsck websites charging tax) and it is on its way.
To get this setup tested, I finally got around to getting USB working on my workstation. I've had the capability for quite some time but I've never used the kernel modules, partially because I don't have any USB devices. The only exception to that is a keyboard PS/2 to USB adapter that I have for use with my Playstation 2. It works great with any PS/2 keyboard I can dig up on the PS2 so I used it for testing USB under Linux.
I already had all of the appropriate modules compiled and installed, they just never got inserted into the kernel. A few insmod's later, I was up and running with a USB keyboard, no sweat. Now I'm waiting for the phone to get it activated. Then I'll buy the data cable and I should be good to go.
Sometime in the future, I'm planning on buying a laptop because I travel so much. I need to carry a mobile office with me, so I can get stuff done. To go along with that, as any geek would point out, I need wireless internet access from anywhere.
The best solution at this point seems to be using Sprint's Unlimited Vision service with a USB data cable. Some of these phones provide an ACM ppp device you can use to dial out and get reasonable wireless access. Another solution seems to be getting a PCS Merlin C201 PCMCIA card.
For anyone else who is interested, here are a collection of links to get you started.
If anyone knows if the Sanyo SCP-8100 works with Linux, I'd like to hear about it.