MINICOM "NO CARRIER" message

[zanemccaig]

I have a Toshiba Satellite A210 with Vista and Ubuntu 8.04 dual booted ith wubi. I bought a US robotics USB modem USR5637 that says Linux supported right on it. But it only connected once right at the start and i didnt do anyhting but it never worked again after that. It says to use minicom to connect it. So I managed to make it dial it and i put in my username and password then i get a bunch of symbols then about 45 seconds later it disconnects and says "NO CARRIER". I tryed to change the Bps to 576000 and the init string to AT&F1 which i heard is what you are supossed to use for USR but i still get the same message. Also I can only dial using the dial directory I can't use ATDT or ATDP. Any help would be veryhelpful thanks in advance.

Zane McCaig

[ModelM]

I have one of these modems & mine works very well. Minicom is a great way to test it, also.

This modem is capable of a DTE rate of up to 230400, but your 57600 selected speed is fine for testing.

Your Init string should be: ATZ4 - this is the USR standard reset string which will enable hardware handshaking.

If your intent is to connect to the Internet, minicom won't do that for you. minicom will let you communicate with the modem, dial a number, and generally test the modem.

For the Internet you'll need a "dialer program". wvdial is already installed and works quite well. In order to use it, you'll need to edit the file:

/etc/wvdial.conf

Here's mine:

[Dialer Defaults]
    New PPPD = yes
    Stupid Mode = yes
    Modem Type = Analog Modem
    ISDN = 0
    Auto DNS = 1
    Auto Reconnect = 0
    Modem = /dev/ttyACM0
    Baud = 230400
    Init1 = ATZ4

Phone = 503 742 9199
Username = WhoIsThis
Password = Guessit

You can (as root) edit your /etc/wvdial.conf file to look like this, then, in a terminal, type:

sudo wvdial

after entering the root password, your modem should dial & connect.

After we get this working, we can work on fancier or easier ways to connect. But we'll stick to the basics for now in order to get things running.

[ModelM]

I forgot to mention, after your modem dials & connects, do not close the terminal window. Bring up your web browser, email program, whatever, & do your thing, but don't close the terminal window until you're finished. That will disconnect your modem.

As I said, we can get fancier with other dialers later. Right now we want to get the framework in place & correct.

[zanemccaig]

ok thank you very much i will try that and then get back to you.

[zanemccaig]

Wow thank you very much I used wvdial and it worked perfectly. The modem cuts out every onece in a while for a few seconds and isnt the fastest but it is way better than nothing. Also I did not put in all the extra stuff you had for the info in wvdial.conf i jsut put the password and what not then I did (sudo ln-s /dev/ttyACM0 /dev/modem). It works fine that way should i put in all of the other information too and it would be great if you could help find an easier way to connect.

many thanks Zane!

[ModelM]

As to changing the "other stuff" in the config file, I would change the "Baud" line & the "Init1" line to what I have above. And comment out any other Init lines by putting a # as the first character of the line.

When the modem pauses, it's probably doing error correction or speed shifts - in other words it seems to be working properly.

You'll probably want to use a dialer program called GnomePPP and I'm sure there will be folks who will jump in here to help you set it up.

I use wvdial because it works so well & is easy to configure. Here's how I use it:

I bring up a terminal & type:

screen

When the hello message from screen appears, I just press return. I am now at a regular terminal, where I type:

sudo wvdial

You've seen what happens next. But then, when the modem connects, I click the button & close the terminal. I can do this because the "screen" program keeps everything running.

When I want to disconnect I open a terminal & type:

screen -r

which puts me right back where I was when the modem connected. I can now just press control-c to hang up & type "exit" to leave screen, then "exit" again to close the terminal.

I'm sure you'll want to use GnomePPP or something similar but you might want to try this once. It's not nearly as convoluted as it sounds. I like using wvdial "straight up" because it lets me see *everything* sent to the modem & *everything* the modem has to say about the connection. All of the "easy" dialer programs hide this info & I don't want anything hidden from me. I want to know exactly what's going on.