Linux with UMTS HSUPA ExpressCard
On my laptop (HP Compaq nx6325) I run Kubuntu Feisty Fawn and I am very satisfied. Especially the built-in support for UMTS modems perfectly fits my needs since I am sort of a stroller.
I used to go online with an “old” CardBus PC Card (PCMCIA). On the back of the card it says Option Globetrotter GT 3G Quad and it came with a real UMTS flatrate (50./month) of the German provider E-Plus.
Anyway, E-Plus is the worst provider ever and I can only recommend everyone to never ever demand any of their services. Although I have to admit, their support is nice and friendly and each time I called they gave me a bonus (5. or 20.) to compensate for my bothering. But this is no help if you want to go online and they simply won’t let you half of the time for whatever reason. There were times I almost freaked out.
Since I rely on a good network connection to do my job my employer now ordered a “Vodafone Mobile Connect Card (Express) UMTS Broadband” (wow, what a name) for me and on its back it says: “Option“, “Model: GE0301“, “Qualcomm 3G CDMA“, and on the box “Option Etna Express“.
It supports HSDPA and HSUPA with a bandwidth of up to 7,2 MBit down- and 1,45 MBit upstream. 
Besides, it is a ExpressCard34 which takes less space in my pocket. This is pretty cool so I could test my ExpressCard slot which works just fine. For those not having such an interface Vodafone encloses a PCMCIA adapter.
Actually, Feisty Fawn comes with all the drivers needed (usbserial). The only problem is that the vendor and product ID of the card are not known to the system, yet. To find out those IDs you issue a
# cat /proc/bus/usb/devices
on the commandline and somewhere in the results it says something like
P: Vendor=0af0 ProdID=7001 Rev= 0.00
S: Manufacturer=Option N.V.
S: Product=Globetrotter HSUPA Modem
The information needed is in the first line. You may add it to a file called /etc/modprobe.conf (which you may have to create) but for Kubuntu I thought /etc/modprobe.d/options would be a good place. For information about the syntax of the file type man modprobe.conf. There I added the line:
options usbserial vendor=0xaf0 product=0x7001
I then rebooted and the next time I inserted the card it got bound to /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1, and /dev/ttyUSB2. Almost exactly the behavior of my old card except that I now surf reliably and at a much higher speed. When will you?
MP3 tag - Album Artist equals TPE2
I really don’t care too much about the ID3 specifications I only want my audio files to be correctly displayed in various media players. One problem I came across is the “Album Artist” tag. This is a quite important tag since I like to sort my files by album. Usually this is no problem since all titles are performed by the same artist and thus the album artist equals the title artist. But as soon as you are having compilations this is not true anymore. In this case the album artist should be “Various” while the title artist fields reflect the actual artists. Furthermore, the “Album Artist” field is required to identify albums with the same name (e.g. “Best Of“). Otherwise, all titles would be part of the one album “Best of“.
So I checked the ID3 tag tools for Linux but I couldn’t find the “Album Artist” field. I checked out the specs for ID3 v2.4.0 but it didn’t help much either. Well, further searching the web with a search engine of your choice revealed that the “TPE2” field is used by media players such as Window Media Player and iTunes (>v7). This field/frame may usually be added through the advanced options or alike of a file.
I haven’t tested other players so far, but I will keep yous informed…
FYI
Today I’d like to give an update on two tools already known to most tool fetishists. Everybody knows PuTTY and probably everyone is using it to connect to SSH servers from a Windows box. But lately I had to reset a Cisco Catalyst switch from the serial console and since the Hyperterminal is not part of Windows Vista anymore I had to look for a utility to help me out. Well, what can I say? It surely helps to read what is on the screen. PuTTY is capable of doing serial connections. I just love this tool. Now, please someone tell me a situation I could use this raw thing.
Well, and the other tool I just discovered a cool function of is dd. One great thing about *nix machines is that they already come with so many basic tools right away. So the task was to create an ISO image of a CD. My first hit was K3B and it worked, of course. But then I doscovered that a simple
dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/home/user/image.iso
does also do the trick.
About
Originally this site was intended as a project site. The goal was to define standards for the perimeterless network using
open-source software. To be honest I simply do not have the time for such a thing. So what is left is a blog with sporadic
posts that are either helpful for myself or I think are helpful for others, too since I had a hard time finding information
on the Internet. Think of it as a knowledge base.
Ehm yes, somtimes I write down my two cents on any topic that may go through my mind at that point in time ;-)