I brought a EM770U PCI express modem for my HP mini 301 laptop, but it lock s up the bios boot process when installed. The ebay seller said it works 1
00% on a Dell mini 1012. Is there reason that Dell PCIe is different from HP PCIe? Should i believe the seller? Is there a different modem i should try?
Try booting first, *then* inserting the modem, at least for the first time. If that modem is doing what some USB 3G modems do, the modem may be appearing as a drive to the BIOS, and the BIOS is getting confused about the boot order.
If inserting the modem after boot works, playing with the boot order in the BIOS may allow you to boot with the modem inserted.
I don't know about the PCIe 3G modems, but the USB ones also tend to come with a built-in micro SD card reader. If you have one of those, make sure there's not a card in it; this might also cause boot order confusion.
Background:
Some USB 3G modems can appear to the host as a modem or as a CD-ROM. When you initially plug them in, they pretend to be a CD-ROM. If that particular PC has never had the drivers for that modem loaded before, the PC will see an autorun file on the "CD" and execute it. This installs the drivers on the PC. The driver then sends a magic "okay, switch sides" command to the modem. The modem disconnects itself from USB, pretends to be a modem, and then reconnects. The PC then sees a modem (sometimes as a new serial port), the driver takes over, and all is OK.
When the modem is subsequently inserted into that same PC, it still pretends to be a CD-ROM. The modem driver, though, is watching out for new CD-ROMs to appear, and it sends the "switch sides" command right away. The modem then flips over to being a modem and everything proceeds as normal.
Not that I know of, but I don't know much about PCIe.
On general principle, no. :)
If you have another PCIe anything, try that on your HP, to see if the slot is good.
Matt Roberds
Hot plugging PCIe would not be an option. I guess the Dell bios knows about this modem, but the HP does not. I disabled all other booting except for the hard disk, but no luck.
Not long-term anyway.
Maybe try a BIOS upgrade.
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On Friday, March 7, 2014 6:38:49 PM UTC-8, Jasen Betts wrote:
Hot plugging works, sort of. USB emulation started, but no device established. I guess the board is 10% working, rather than 100% as claimed.
[ 134.332138] usb 1-5: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci [ 134.466635] usb 1-5: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=1404 [ 134.466653] usb 1-5: New USB device strings: Mfr=3, Product=2, SerialNumber=0 [ 134.466667] usb 1-5: Product: HUAWEI Mobile [ 134.466679] usb 1-5: Manufacturer: HUAWEI Technology [ 134.557956] Initializing USB Mass Storage driver... [ 134.560220] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage [ 134.560229] USB Mass Storage support registered. [ 134.649336] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial [ 134.650713] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic [ 134.650773] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic [ 134.756424] usbcore: registered new interface driver option [ 134.759960] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port) [ 134.764073] option 1-5:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.764612] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0 [ 134.764695] option 1-5:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.765119] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1 [ 134.765187] option 1-5:1.2: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.765583] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2 [ 134.765653] option 1-5:1.3: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.766096] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB3 [ 134.766166] option 1-5:1.4: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.766564] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB4 [ 134.766632] option 1-5:1.5: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [ 134.767054] usb 1-5: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB5 [ 438.634815] usb 1-5: USB disconnect, device number 2
I was confused. I thought you were talking about an ExpressCard, rather than an internal card. As far as I know, ExpressCard is meant to be hot swappable.
That dmesg output looks reasonable to me. I don't know why it registers six serial ports, but it looks like you should have /dev/ttyUSB0 through /dev/ttyUSB5 . Are those devices present in /dev after you insert the modem?
If they are, and you fire up Minicom and point it at /dev/ttyUSB0 through /dev/ttyUSB5 , and type AT commands at it, what happens? (Try commands like ATDT1234 or ATI, ATI1, ATI2, ATI3, etc.) I would expect some kind of response from the modem on one of those ports. You might not be able to get on the 3G network this way, but you should get
*something* back from the modem, to show that it's alive.Also note that to change ports in Minicom, I have sometimes found it necessary to switch ports via the Minicom configuration menus, save the configuration, exit Minicom, and then restart it. Other times it just works as soon as I switch the port in the menu.
Matt Roberds
Yes, i am using an internal card for testing. It is still not an option to open up the bottom of the laptop to unplug and plug the card for booting everytime. But just trying it out of curosity.
Probably because it found problem in the serial ports and kept trying the next one. There should really be one port. The devices are there, but "minicom /dev/ttyUSB1 to 5 got no respond. No echo at all to "AT".
I'm not sure if this is true. I have a Novatel USB 3G adapter and whenever I plug it in, it always registers three serial ports: ttyUSB0,
1, and 2. I just tried it and the relevant dmesg lines are similar to what you see with your card: [525.524281] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial [525.524295] USB Serial support registered for generic [525.524328] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic [525.524330] usbserial: USB Serial Driver core [525.535744] USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port) [525.535837] option 6-1:1.0: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [525.535928] usb 6-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB0 [525.535947] option 6-1:1.1: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [525.535996] usb 6-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB1 [525.536028] option 6-1:1.2: GSM modem (1-port) converter detected [525.536076] usb 6-1: GSM modem (1-port) converter now attached to ttyUSB2 [525.536091] usbcore: registered new interface driver option [525.536092] option: v0.7.2:USB Driver for GSM modemsAfter this happens, I have all three ports in /dev:
$ ls -l /dev/ttyU* crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 0 Mar 12 06:28 /dev/ttyUSB0 crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 1 Mar 12 06:26 /dev/ttyUSB1 crw-rw---T 1 root dialout 188, 2 Mar 12 06:26 /dev/ttyUSB2
(Don't worry if the permissions on yours aren't the same as mine, but you should have /dev/ttyUSB0 through /dev/ttyUSB5 .)
For me, the port that answers AT commands is ttyUSB0 ; the other ones are "there" but I can't get a response out of them. I assume they are for some test or debug purpose but I don't know for sure. ttyUSB0 responds to "AT" with "OK" and to "ATI" with several lines of text describing the device.
If you were typing "minicom /dev/ttyUSB0" on the command line... that's not how you tell minicom what port to use. :) Start minicom, hit control-A, hit O, select "Serial port setup" from the menu, then item A, "Serial Device". Type in the device, hit Enter, hit Enter again to the "Change which setting?" prompt to dismiss the menu, go down to "Save setup as...", enter a name to save that setup under (for example: usb0). Exit Minicom and restart with "minicom usb0" to load that setup. Try "AT" and see if the card responds.
It may help to be root when you're running Minicom like this.
The following only matters if you can solve the boot problem:
Besides the above, I had to do some further configuration to get it to work for me; I had to configure wvdial (a PPP dialer) to "dial" a fake phone number to get the adapter to actually make a connection to the 3G network. Since I don't use this adapter often, I just manually run wvdial when I need it.
I first set up my adapter on Debian in 2009; newer distributions are maybe a little better at automatically detecting new devices, but it also wouldn't surpise me if you still need to go through some kind of "set up new network adapter" configuration. If you are expecting to get a pop-up that says "found new network adapter", you might be disappointed.
Matt Roberds
That's doing it the hard way (the sometimes-impossible way)
Do "minicom -D /dev/USB0" etc.
yeah, you'll need root, or to be in group dialout.
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*inspects man page*
Damn... that would have saved me a lot of time in the past. At least now it will save me time in the future. Thanks!
Matt Roberds
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