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This is something that I wanted to work on for a while but I always got distrated. It’s still not perfect, but it works well enough that I want to share it here.

From what I understand this should work with all of the Linux based Motorola smartphones and actually might work with many other smartphones that can be programmed to work as USB modems. As written here it has been tested on a Motorola A1200 / Ming using the T-Mobile US EDGE network; pointers on how to use this on other carriers are at the end of this post.

Let’s start. You need an EeePC and a Motorola phone like the Ming and a USB cable. Make sure that the USB mode of the phone is set to USB Modem.

You also need to have wvdial and pppd installed on your EeePC. I might add a section on how to do this under the default Xandros version of Linux if people are interested; on EeeDora it’s just a yum install wvdial away.

On the EeePC you need to edit two files (I’ll simply assume that you know how to do this - there are many ways, for example sudo vi FILENAME)

/etc/ppp/options has only one line:
:192.168.0.254
which defines the default address to be used for the peer that the pppd will connect to.

/etv/wvdial/wvdial.conf takes a little more work:
[Dialer Defaults]
Baud = 460800
Modem Type = USB Modem
[Dialer MingUSB]
Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
Init1 = ATZ
Init2 = AT&FE0V1&C1S0=0
Init3 = AT+CGDCONT=1,\34IP\34,\34wap.voicestream.com\34,,0,0
Carrier Check = no
Stupid Mode = no
Phone = *99***1#
Username = tmobile
Password = tmobile
The Init3 string is one thing you need to change for different network providers (see below), the phone number seems to work for almost all carriers and and username and password appear to be arbitrary - Google is your friend if you run into a provider that actually checks them.

Now call wvdial USBMing (depending on the permissions in the distribution that you use, you may have to do this as root) and you should see something like this:
[hohndel@Eee linux-2.6]$ sudo wvdial MingUSB
–> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.60
–> Initializing modem.
–> Sending: ATZ
ATZ
OK
–> Sending: AT&FE0V1&C1S0=0
AT&FE0V1&C1S0=0
OK
–> Sending: AT+CGDCONT=1,”IP”,”wap.voicestream.com”,,0,0
OK
–> Modem initialized.
–> Sending: ATDT*99***1#
–> Waiting for carrier.
CONNECT
–> Carrier detected. Waiting for prompt.
~[7f]}#@!}!}!} }< }!}$}%\}"}&} } } } }#}$@#}%}&h}#} } }'}"}(}"}#}<~
--> PPP negotiation detected.
–> Starting pppd at Sat Feb 16 21:20:06 2008
–> Pid of pppd: 2825
–> Using interface ppp0
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> local IP address 10.173.197.5
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> remote IP address 192.168.0.254
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> primary DNS address 66.94.9.120
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]
–> secondary DNS address 66.94.25.120
–> pppd: �-8[08]h-8[08]

The responses from the phone that look like garbage will likely differ when you try it; I included them here so you aren’t surprised when you see them.

There’s one problem remaining that I haven’t figured out, yet. After I kill wvdial in oder to interrupt the connection the phone doesn’t appear to interrupt the GPRS or EDGE connection to the network. A new attempt to connect will fail with a BUSY error. Unplugging and re-plugging the USB cable gets everything back to normal, but there has to be a better way to do this… please comment below if you have solution!

Finally, in order to use this with a different network provider, you need to change the the Init3 string. The format is AT+CGDCONT=1,\34IP\34,\34APN\34,,0,0; your provider will give you the Access Point Name (APN) to use and in most cases all you need to do is to insert that in the second set of double quotes (which are encoded as \34 to avoid cut and paste problems). Much more on this topic can be found in this article on GPRS, you may also want to look at a detailed explanation of the GPRS specific AT commands and finally at this PDF that has a lengthy list of possible settings (but interestingly enough doesn’t include T-Mobile US).

Thanks for visiting!
I hope this was helpful - if not, please leave a comment and let me know why! Were you searching for something else? Did I miss an important aspect?