Qualcomm Gobi 2000 setup for Telecom XT network. Help please.

Forums › Spark New Zealand (including Skinny and BigPipe) › Qualcomm Gobi 2000 setup for Telecom XT network. Help please.

brotsack

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#91342 11-Oct-2011 20:52

I have got a Thinkpad X201 with a Gobi 2000 3G modem built in. I am not able to get the modem working with the XT network even so the hardware specs should allow connection to the network. I am in Motueka and we have 850MHz HSDPA available.
I do own another 3G card (Sierra Wireless MC8790) which works flawless on the network, but requires a whitelisted bios for the Thinkpad.
I would very much appreciate if someone could give me some hints how to connect with the Gobi2000. The Lenovo forum was not of much help. I tried to install the drivers with different DEFAULTIMAGE=X setup options to no avail. It should not be that difficult, as other cards just require driver installation and insertion of the sim to work (e.g. Sierra Wireless, Ericsson)

Thanks.

nzbnw

2374 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Spark NZ

#532103 11-Oct-2011 21:01

I have one of these laptops for work, works perfectly.

I just used the access connections programe from the start menu, setup the APN direct.telecom.co.nz and was away.

nzbnw

brotsack

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#532108 11-Oct-2011 21:18

Which frequency is your card using? Are you in one of the main centres on the 2100Mhz band? My card does find the Telecom network when I let it search in the profile, but does not connect. I am using internet.telecom.co.nz, but I think the only diffrence is that the APN i am using is firewalled.
The other card even recognizes the tower as Telecom NZ, which the Gobi 2000 only labels as unknown.

nzbnw

2374 posts

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Trusted

Spark NZ

#532131 11-Oct-2011 22:12

850MHz I'm pretty sure, as I don't get 2100MHz (at least when I checked some time ago) at home. You are correct re the APN, I can connect on both.

IIRC this is a quad band chip. Try disabling your WiFi, not sure why but I remember doing this for some reason at some point.

nzbnw

plambrechtsen

1948 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#532210 12-Oct-2011 09:00

I have a Thinkpad T410 with one of these in them as they are standard issue with new laptops at Telecom and they work fine too.

If you have a look here: http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Qualcomm_Gobi_2000

Even though it's Linux related it has a link to the Lenovo site to download the latest drivers and links to download

You need to make sure you use Thinkpad Access Connections to do the connections as the modem doesn't show up as a modem under Network Connections like the Sierra's do which is a bit of pain. I vastly prefer the dialup via Network Connections but that's how IBM / Lenovo have developed it.

Look in the system tray for this icon:

Then if you open it you will get this screen so you can connect:

Try that and see how you go.

brotsack

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#532258 12-Oct-2011 10:19

@nzbnw
Will try to disable WLAN when Iget home tonight. But I am already getting sick of replacing the wwan card every time I am trying to get it to work. I usually boot of a VHD installation which only had the gobi drivers and firmware installed.

@ Plambrechtsen
I am running the latest Access Connections and the latest available gobi stuff from Lenovo and the card does not like to recognize the Telecom tower as "Telecom NZ", only as unknown, even though it has created the proper TelecomData profile. May be there is something wrong with the card. Should not be locked, as I bought it as unlocked.

Could you check which firmware is being loaded. I usually do it via device manager-modem-Gobi-properties-diagnostics, which shows al sorts of information. I don't know where to find it in access connections.

plambrechtsen

1948 posts

Uber Geek
Inactive user

#532263 12-Oct-2011 10:40

There is also the Radio Icon in the system tray

Which gives you further details about your WWAN card. I've removed the IMSI/IMEI/ICCID since they aren't relevant.

I remember I also had to upgrade the firmware & drivers from here:

http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-76520
and
http://support.lenovo.com/en_US/detail.page?LegacyDocID=MIGR-72938

To get hibernate it working properly in XP. The COE we run is XP so YMMV if you're using Visa or Win7.

brotsack

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#532489 12-Oct-2011 19:21

Well, I did a re-install with a new copy of my generic vhd. By default the firmware loader loads the Vodafone image even though the Telecom sim is inserted. When I uninstall the qualcomm software and re-install with the commandline option DEFAULTIMAGE=6 for the generic firmware it seems to ignore everything and still loads the vodafone firmware image. I copied all files from the generic UMTS firmware and the default directory into the vodafone image directory and restart the system. Now the screen you have added shows the generic firmware loaded, but the card still does not identify the cell tower as Telecom NZ and I still can't connect and depending what I try, I get told that my sim is not activated. The only difference is that your driver version seems to be older. I get reported 3.0.2.5 yours seems to be 1.0.4.6. I have a look if i can find an older version of the drivers. If I can't get it to work tonight, I will probably give up for a while and use my ericsson card with the whitelisted bios, which works great. One more thing, I only get reported 28% signal strenght, but with the ericsson I seems to be much better (have not checked).

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plambrechtsen

1948 posts

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Inactive user

#532502 12-Oct-2011 20:00

Are you sure that the SIM card is inserted correctly before you powered on your laptop? Another gotcha I found is that the guy who built the laptop didn't properly insert the SIM card. The way I found out was the Radio screen above was completely different than the screen above showing the IMEI (serial number of physical mobile WWAN card) and IMSI (serial number of your sim card).

I found if the SIM wasn't inserted correctly the Gobi swapped over into CDMA-EVDO mode and showed up the ESN of the Gobi card.

If the screen above is completely different then the sim card is probably not put in right, completely power off the PC completely (don't do a soft reboot or suspend/hibernate) then try again.

brotsack

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#532527 12-Oct-2011 21:03

100% certain. Reinstalled my Ericsson F3607gw and now my connection works brilliantly without even touching the sim. Back to 96% signal strength compared to 20% with the gobi installed. Same Laptop, same location, go figure. I'll stick with Ericsson and/or Sierra wireless even when that means to uninstall and find a new whitelisted bios every time I would like to update the bios for some reason. I might give it another shot in a different location (next time in christchurch possibly). Thanks for all your suggestions and trying to help.