Concepts in the Paradox

In a pinch, I use my Treo 600 with Sprint PCS as a wireless modem on my Linux laptop:

First you’ll need the supplied USB cable that came with the Treo. Plug it into any USB port, and then dial:

##TEATHERED

This will put the phone into packet modem mode. Two devices will appear on your system: ttyUSB0 and ttyUSB1. The ttyUSB1 device will be your packet modem.

Next, configure ppp on the Linux laptop:

/etc/ppp/sprint.modem

TIMEOUT         5
ABORT           'nBUSYr'
ABORT           'nERRORr'
ABORT           'nNO ANSWERr'
ABORT           'nNO CARRIERr'
ABORT           'nNO DIALTONEr'
ABORT           'nRINGINGrnrRINGINGr'
''              ~r~AT
TIMEOUT         20
OK              ATD#777
TIMEOUT         22
CONNECT         ""

Also, edit /etc/ppp/peers/sprint

noauth
connect '/usr/sbin/chat -v -f /etc/ppp/sprint.modem'
defaultroute
usepeerdns
/dev/ttyUSB1
115200
local
novj

Note that ttyUSB1 may not aways be the phone if you already have a device using ttyUSB1. I’ve had it come up as ttyUSB3 a few times, so check the output of the dmesg command to verify.

Now, make sure you don’t have any other network devices up, such as your wifi card or network card (ifconfig eth0 down), and type:

pppd call sprint

Check the output of /var/log/messages for a status:

tail -f /var/log/messages

Every once in a while the modem won’t respond by the time script times out. If this is the case, just try again. It usually works the second time.

Bugs

If you are using the USB cable, you should be aware that with the Treo 600 USB cable there is a overflow in the USB chip on the cable. After about 7 minutes the connection will die and you will need to redial or possibly put the phone back into tethered mode.

A work around is to get the serial cable for the Treo 600, which doesn’t have this chip problem. A more expensive option is to purchase a Treo 650, which fixes this problem with the USB cable.

This post is based on this old “Treo 600 modem how to“.

After a week of slacking off and not working out at all, I’ve kicked things back into gear and re-committed myself to my goals. A few changes though: Why do I take the bus to the gym? How does this make sense? Instead, I am going to walk to and from the gym, and do my elliptical training there. When I get home, I’ll do all my other exercises with the weights and ball.

I tried that tonight, and it worked out rather well. I looked for the 38 just in case, but all I saw were the “garage” and “not in service” busses from the line starting to go into night-mode. I walked it, though bit of a power walk, and I beat the bus. I didn’t even see it when I reached Van Ness. Geary and Divisadero to Sutter and Van Ness isn’t so bad of a walk with good music on the iPod!

I think I may do part of my work out during my lunch break next week. It is only 20 minutes on the elliptical trainer, and might be a good way to get my heart rate up 5 times a week instead of 3.

–

I’m seriously considering going to Front 242 @ DNA on Nov. 6. That is, serious enough to go by myself if I can’t find anyone else to go with me. The problem is, as far as I know, no one in my circle of friends listens to it.

–

I tried to put OpenBSD on my Toshiba Portege 3500 tablet PC over the past few days. At first I tried Ubuntu’s Breezy Badger, but something went horribly awry and I ended up with an unbootable machine. I threw my hands up in the air and downloaded the Openbsd snapshot. The poor little laptop doesn’t have a CD or floppy drive, so I had to netboot. x86 netboot really sucks. I could go on forever about how awful it is, but I’ll just say I had to try a little too hard for it to take.

Somewhere in the process of editing the disklabel, blew away my Windows XP partition. I threw my hands up in the air again and decided that maybe I just didn’t need Windows anymore and OpenBSD will be my bread and butter. Mmm… perhaps with some jam too.

It is happily building Firefox as we blog. Now to get to get my Treo 600 to work as a modem with it…

On the way home from work I stopped by CompUSA to get a carry case for my Powerbook. It was then that she caught my eye. So small. So petite. So cute.

And ultra portable. Everything that I wanted in a sub-notebook:
The Toshiba Libretto U105.

753 Centrino/512MB/60GB/7.2″ TFT/Card reader/Finger reader/DVD dock/5 hour battery

I tapped her little keys, adjusted her little display, and checked out her stats. Will she run OpenBSD? Linux? I must find out everything about her!

It is either that, or my other, much less expensive obsession, a Zaurus running Openbsd.

*sigh* Do I need more computer equipment? Is that even a question I should be asking myself?

Thanks to Google, I’ll finally be able to get wireless anywhere in the city. Most importantly, that I means I can use my laptop on Muni and possibly BART. If there was one idea that was past it’s time, it was to put freaking wireless on the train.

Unless, wireless + BART = Terrorism?

“We had to shut off the wireless and lock the underground bathrooms do to a ‘heightened security alert.’”

Another thought I had was if there is wifi all over the city, wouldn’t triangulation be possible? An iPaq with a wireless card stashed in each bus would make it possible to track when busses would arrive and where they are. Muni already has a similar system to this, but it is only on a few lines for some strange reason. You can look at it over on Nextbus.