Re: UPDATE - Good cell phone to use as modem with Debian? Some success...
On Thu, Jan 05, 2006 at 11:12:07AM -0700, Nate Duehr wrote:
> >[about the charge function in usb cables ]
>
> No, most phones are using battery technology and lower voltages these
> days that allows for charging from USB. My Motorola RAZR charges from
> its USB cable, no problems. The only issue I've run into is some
It turns out that when plugged into the Dell laptop (usb2) the phone
actually charges. After a while the battery meter starts going up
again. At first, and this was puzzling, the battery meter went down
(from 4 when unplugged to 2 when plugged). After a while it went back
up. So it looks like this function works.
> mini-USB cables I had were "four pin" and others were "five pin" and the
> phone needed the five to charge, and only four for data-only.
This cable has 4 pins at the computer end. Aren't all USB cables 4
conductor (at the computer end) plus the shield/plug frame?
> >So I try it. Upon plugging the phone in two separate computers (a
> >Thinkpad 600E with USB 1/sarge and a Dell 8600 with USB2/woody) the
> >phone beeps like this: two ascending tones, 4 ascending tones and two
> >desceding tones. Is the latter sign of trouble?
>
> Yes. The phone didn't negotiate properly with the PC.
Well, that still happens but sometimes I get a more complete lsusb report:
Bus 001 Device 011: ID 22b8:2a62 Motorola PCS
Device Descriptor:
bLength 18
bDescriptorType 1
bcdUSB 1.10
bDeviceClass 2 Communications
bDeviceSubClass 0
bDeviceProtocol 0
bMaxPacketSize0 64
idVendor 0x22b8 Motorola PCS
idProduct 0x2a62
bcdDevice 0.01
iManufacturer 1 Motorola, Inc.
iProduct 2 Motorola E815
iSerial 0
bNumConfigurations 1
Configuration Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 2
wTotalLength 67
bNumInterfaces 2
bConfigurationValue 1
iConfiguration 0
bmAttributes 0xc0
Self Powered
MaxPower 20mA
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 0
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 1
bInterfaceClass 2 Communications
bInterfaceSubClass 2 Abstract (modem)
bInterfaceProtocol 1 AT-commands
iInterface 3 Motorola Communication Interface
unknown descriptor type: 05 24 00 09 01
unknown descriptor type: 05 24 01 03 01
unknown descriptor type: 04 24 02 0f
unknown descriptor type: 05 24 06 00 01
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN
bmAttributes 3
Transfer Type Interrupt
Synch Type none
wMaxPacketSize 16
bInterval 32
Interface Descriptor:
bLength 9
bDescriptorType 4
bInterfaceNumber 1
bAlternateSetting 0
bNumEndpoints 2
bInterfaceClass 10
bInterfaceSubClass 0
bInterfaceProtocol 0
iInterface 3 Motorola Communication Interface
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type none
wMaxPacketSize 64
bInterval 0
Endpoint Descriptor:
bLength 7
bDescriptorType 5
bEndpointAddress 0x02 EP 2 OUT
bmAttributes 2
Transfer Type Bulk
Synch Type none
wMaxPacketSize 64
bInterval 0
Language IDs: (length=4)
0409 English(US)
Once in a while the phone beeps, like it just tried to re-negotiate
the connection and then I get the very incomplete usb report I posted
previously.
I've read at www.bitpim.org that a driver called acm handles the usb
serial port in cell phones, but I don't seem to have it in either
kernel 2.4.22 (woody) or 2.6.8 (sarge). Bitpim won't install in
woody (dependencies) and fails to run in sarge. I'll have to
investigate this further, but it seems that first the phone's devices
(serial port, memory) have to be seen at the usb layer if any other
software is to use them. For now I'd be happy to have /dev/acm0
(or whatever) so I can use ppp with the phone. Can anyone tell me
what I'm missing? what the unknown descriptor types mean? Where to
find the driver that would talk usb and give me the serial device?
> >[ about getting to the internal memory ]
>
> Not necessarily. It's completely up to the manufacturer how they
> implement "getting to" the memory. Many phones seem to use a
> proprietary serial stream to the serial USB "interface" to retrieve/set
> data in their memory.
I guess that's the case. Mount -t msdos /dev/sda1 /mnt doesn't work
(not a valid block device) even though the same card (sandisk 512M
transflash) is seen perfectly in the pda (when inserted in its SD carrier)
> I'd be more worried that Verizon has done something wonky to that
> phone's USB stuff to disable data use, really.
I'm afraid that I'll have to navigate Verizon's tech support soon...
> >[ about reporting power needs of a usb device ]
>
> Yes. USB devices are supposed to negotiate how much power they wish to
> use from the bus, ...
There's something not quite stable in the usb connection. I'm not sure
if it's the phone or woody but the phone has been charging on the usb
cable as I typed. It's now charged and it hasn't beeped in a while.
In any case, as seen above, it gets 20ma which is also reflected in the
power meter into which the laptop is plugged in: about 4 Watts.
> >[ about loading the palmos address book into the phone ]
>
> All I can share at this point is that I haven't even attempted to sync
> the Motorola RAZR with Linux yet... the Motorola tools CD and a USB
> cable appears to work under Windows to Outlook (ugh!).
I don't run windows at all and of course I don't have any phone
numbers/addresses in outlook, so my only option is to get the palmos
address book somehow imported.
I first tried to copy the address book from within palmos to the
transflash card after it was in the SD slot. There doesn't seem to
be a way to do this. Next, after a sync with kpilot, I exported
the address book. The result is a comma-separated list of fields,
one record per line. Some comparison with the palmos screens reveals
that this is the format:
LastName,FirstName,Company,WorkPH,HomePH,FaxPH,OtherPH,Email,Address,
City,State,Zip,Country,Title,Custom1,Custom2,Custom3,Custom4
The phone itself has 3 types of records: Phone No., Email Addr and
Mailing List.
Phone no. has these fields:
Name
Category - Business, Persoal, General, VIP
Number
Type - Work, Home, Main, Mobile, Fax, Pager
Speed No - 1, 2, 3
Ringer - All the ring tones available
Picture - The available pictures
More - this field allows adding more phone numbers or email addresses
So it looks like some data massaging is going to be needed here.
Does anyone have some script to do this so I don't reinvent the
wheel? Of course I need to know the internal data structure that
these records would go into and where. The manual of the phone is
totally useless for this. With any luck the same format is used
on all motorola phones...
> If/when I get time to fiddle with it, I'll send an update here, but it
> may not help with your particular phone...?
>
> All I've done so far is plug the phone into a Linux box running Sarge,
> and it recognized it (I don't have the kernel output with me here at
> this location) and the phone was able to charge. I didn't see any
Well, it seems that I've gotten just this far with woody.
> indication that serial or mass storage came up, however. Just a "device
> number" that the USB subsystem "recognized".
Try enabling "Dial Up Networking", that might make the "modem" interface
visible. On my phone I did it by typing ##DIALUP. You have to do it
quite fast for it to take. Of course that was still not enough to
get a serial device on the computer, unless it's somewhere that I've
missed. It's not in /dev/usb/ (kernel 2.4.22).
Does anyone who knows usb/hotplug think that maybe some configuration
with the specific product codes might help? Anyone else has this
phone?
Augustine
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