Re: New USB 3G modem

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2011-09-02 at 15:53 +0100, perazim portugalmail pt wrote:
> I have a "generic" USB modem labeled "HSDPA  3.5G Wireless Modem" bought
> from Deal Extreme in Hong Kong.
> 
> It works on Windows XP and installs its own drivers when plugged the
> first time.
> 
> When plugged to Fedora 14, I see a CDROM detected and a USB storage
> device if a microSDHC is plugged into the slot on the modem. I do not
> see usb_modeswitch run and NetworkManager does not see this modem.

usb_modeswitch needs the right logic to flip the device to modem mode,
without that there's no change ModemManager can detect the modem,
because it's not a modem yet.  After that, we may need to implement
support for this device's specific quirks.  I usually ask users to
zip/gzip up the contents of the "fake" driver CD and email it to me so
that I can inspect the drivers and the connection manager and determine
what AT commands (and thus what firmware variant) the device uses.  Then
we can implement more than basic support for the device.

> Using lsusb I see: ID 0685:7000 with no description whatever. There is
> no file by this name in /etc/usb_modeswitch.d/
> 
> How do I add this modem to the appropriate tables so that it is
> detected?

If there is no entry for that device in usb_modeswitch's /etc directory,
then you'll need to communicate first with the usb_modeswitch project
and determine the sequence to flip the device to modem mode.  That might
include installing a USB sniffer in Windows and sniffing the command
sequences that the driver uses to tell the device to enter modem mode.
The usb_modeswitch project is pretty good about helping people through
that process.  Once that's done, we can proceed with inspecting the
actual modem and determining what we need to do to get it connecting to
the network.

Dan