How to install Sierra Aircard 850 on Jornada 728

Hi everybody! I managed to get hold of a Sierra Aircard 850 which I would like to use on my Jornada 728.

I recall that there were various discussions on this forum about installing it on win ce 3.0 by using a combination of drivers from both Aircard 775 and 850, but I did not manage today to find the right thread. One older thread was pointing towards the Alpaxo Redgear site, which doesn't exist any more.

Therefore, please, can somebody help me on how exactly to do this installation? Is Redgear required or not?

Please note that right now the Sierra Aircard 775 drivers and Watcher are installed on my Jornada, which is running OK with the Sierra 775. Would it be possible to have at the same time the setting for both cards 775 and 850?

Thank you!

Hi again everybody!

I've tried to no avail the followings:
1. Installing the wince.net version cab file for Sierra Aircard 850 (which is the only one available) leads to the 3G Watcher not starting with or without Redgear on.
2. I have kept the copies of the acgprs.dll and acgprser.dll from both programs Watcher for 775 and 3G Watcher for 850 and I have cross-replaced them by turn in the other program (after new installation, reset, etc), i.e. the files of Watcher for 775 in the 3G Watcher for 850 and the other way round. No success in any version, with or withour Redgear on.

So for the moment I've run out of options. What did I do wrong? Any suggestion please?

Edited by arlex 2011-06-07 5:31 AM

Install redgear
install Sierra 850 cab
Put mfcce 400 and olece 400 in the same folder of the Sierra
Now the card command should open
replace the gprser and acgprser file in the windows folder with the sae file taken from the Sierra 775 package
Reset and insert the card

Thank you very much rgisondi!!! I will follow tonight the hints and report back! Thanks again!

Hi rgisondi,

After performing the advised operations here is how I stand:

Installation and run of the 3G Watcher going OK, version R1.5.7.1106 in place. It was a bit of a problem to get the wince.net files mfcce400.dll and olece400.dll, I downloaded them from the internet, I hope that these are the right files (I compared the size with those in my NEC900c and look of similar size)

Indeed the 3G Watcher gets opened and recognizes the cards, actually both cards 850 and 775 - this is a nice surprise, thank you very much!

But the program runs very slow, it eats the processor capacity, starting up 3GWatcher is in about 11sec, initializing in another 11sec
It regognizes the 775 and it displays GPRS
It regognizes the 850 it displays 3G and then HS
All options & settings are opening really slow in about 20-30 secs

For the first time, while trying to connect to internet it lag with the text "Connecting to internet" and got never connected. I had to soft reset.
After that I managed to get connected several times. But playing by turn with the 775 and 850 boards, after a while I did not manage to get connected at all, it went again in the loop with "Connecting to internet".
Could that be come from Vodafone for switching freqently the SIM card between the 2 pcmcia modems with different IMEIs?

From time to time I got the message "Fails to communicate with the device"

That's all for tonight, I'll see what else can I do tomorrow evening to make it work and will report back.

Thank you, rgisondi.

Edited by arlex 2011-06-08 9:19 PM

You are using a software not made for wince 3.0, in Think is not strange if it doesn't work well.

I had the same problem that you are now experimenting.

The connection could not be estabilished with some operator. For this problem I found some work around. The first is to set a self connection with a specific operator (sometimes hepls), the second is to type quik the key shift when the sierra driver try to estabilish the connection (weird but sometime helped also); the last is to use sierra as modem with a remote connection with the os network settings.

I hope this could help.
''

Thank you again rgisondi!
Reading your lines I have some questions please on how to do that:



How to do that, is it a specific setting of the 3G Watcher?



This is clear, I will try it next time.



How to do that, I looked into the CP settings and didn't find anything close to that, do I need some extra software?

Last night I have hardreset Jornada, thinking I will resume again tonight the whole procedure. But just before the hardreset I have discovered that the 2 files acgprs.dll and acgprser.dll were missing in the Windows folder. So either it happened something with them during operating the modem (hard to think of or even simplier I did not copy the 775 files after deleting the 850 files (quite possible since Total Commander cannot overwrite the files, the 850 files have first to be manually deleted and then the 775 files to be added in Windows Explorer - did this happened to you too?). I will repeat the procedure tonight to make sure.

But one basic further question: do you know which are the driver files and which are the Watcher files in this installation? I'm asking because I'm contemplating the idea of using the 775 Watcher (much faster and with better defined graphics) and just using the specific files making the 3G 850 card being recognized by the OS.
This means changing a bit your procedure to:

- Install redgear
- install Sierra 775 cab (i.o. install Sierra 850 cab)
- Put mfcce 400 and olece 400 in the same folder of the Sierra; here I would expect to add also the specific 850 driver files alowing 3G, but I don't know which are these driver files
- Now the 850 card should be recognized by the system without asking about the driver
- replace the gprser.dll and acgprser.dll files in the windows folder with the same files taken from the Sierra 775 package - this is not necessary anymore since the 775 files are already there
- Reset and insert the card

This of course would work if only the 775 Watcher program has the necessary instructions inside to drive the 3G work of the 850 card and not only the GPRS.

Any comments on this new procedure, please?

Edited by arlex 2011-06-09 5:27 AM

Hi rgisondi! I have repeated the 850 card instalation procedure with no progress. It is the same low speed, there was no mistake in what I did last night. It is the same story of not getting connecetd at all and I have tried with all my 3 Sierra cards (1x775 and 2x850). I used the trick with the Shift key, but no success. I even played with two SIMs of the 3G operators Vodafone and Orange.
What is your success rate of getting connected? Is it 100%, are you getting on-line at every attempt?
Are you still using the Sierra 850 card on regular basis or is it just occasionally?

Thank you!

RedGear was meant for software only (not drivers), so really it is a miracle that it even works at all. Having said that, if you are having trouble, rgisondi's 3rd suggestion is probably best. With a lot of these 3G cards, once you install a driver and can get the device to recognize the card, you can set up a normal modem connection on it and it will work well, but without a pretty interface. You would set up the device using modem configuration and enter certain phone numbers (e.g. *99***1#) and modem initialization commands.

I recommend looking up how people connect to your provider if they are using Linux. Otherwise, try searching this forum for CGDCONT and perhaps you can get a clue there. They should provide the modem initialization commands and phone numbers that you need. If your SIM is PIN-locked, don't forget to include that in your initialization string.

Hi Isotherm, thank you for answering me and for the additional hints, I thought I got into a dead end. Now I have a new perspective to work on.

Indeed there it is to mark the difference between the software and the drivers the way you phrased it, yet it is not clear to me if the endless lag in connecting comes from the driver or from the software. If the card is recognized when inserting it (and no message to name the driver), does this mean automatically that the driver as a whole is 100% suitable and from that point on it is to deal only with the interface software?
If so, then I learned an important basic lesson (I'm not an IT specialist as you see), thank you for it!

I never thought of connecting this Sierra 850 card to a specific provider by using terminal commands. I'm familiar with that from my Ericsson GC85 card which is detected as standard modem by WinCE. I'm using it by entering AT commands on terminal. I'll try that with Sierra 850 too, I'll report back here as soon as I'll have some results.

If that method will work on regular basis, then I'll have to install only the drivers for this Sierra 850 card and not the whole 3G Watcher (to save memory on the J728). Therefore can you please help me in identifying the driver only and separate it from the rest of the installed 3G software?

Thank you so much!!!

Hi guys!
I've tried connecting this Sierra 850 card to a specific provider by using terminal commands and it works, but again the repeatability is low. With both my Sierra 850 card in most of the cases it shows connected every time, but actually I do not get through to the internet. Is it something wrong with the driver?

With the Sierra 775 card this method didn't work, I was getting an error message at the string at+cgdcont=1,"ip","internet.vodafone.ro", I've tried also other alternatives of the string. Again strange because I managed to connect this 775 card once via the 3G Watcher. Anyway, this is not my major concern, for the time being I'm focussed on the 850 card.

So, please, any further recommendation for the 850 card to move further?

Edited by arlex 2011-06-11 11:13 PM

Hi guys! To continue the saga, I've experienced damages to the intrinsic setting of the Sierra cards (1pc of 775 and 2pcs of 850) due to frequently connecting them to the wrong version of Watcher software, i.e. the 775 card to the 3G Watcher and the 850 card to the gprs Watcher.
The general and operator specific setting of the Sierra cards are saved in the memory of the card and therefore move along with the card from one HPC to another or to a laptop. Generally this is good, but also has some drawbacks.
To repair the above mentioned damages to the settings I had to connect the cards to a laptop version of Sierra Watcher, but the "nice" part is that the 2 cards require different versions of the Watcher that cannot coexist at the same time on the same pc.

Otherwise I'm still in the phase of getting the 850 connected once in a while (1 of 10 attempts) via the 3G Watcher, while via the AT terminal commands I'm getting connected every time, but actually without internet acces.
Hitting fast the Shift key proved to be helpfull in 1 out of about 100 trials.

I was wondering about the first suggestion of rgisondi "to set a self connection with a specific operator", what actually does it mean?
I've set up the cards on a laptop with the Sierra pc version of the Watcher for a specific 3G operator connection, also setup as default. So moving the card to Jornada the Watcher software opens exactly on that particular connection. Would it be more than that?

So far I'm stuck, I don't know what else to do any further than that. Thanks for any advice!

Edited by arlex 2011-06-12 2:42 PM

Go to the Tools section of the manu and set your operator as automatic connection. This help me to connect to the italian h3g operator.

Even if display as connected the card often loose the connection when the signal is weak. This happened non only with the J728 but also when I tried it with Sigmarion 3 and the Smartbook g138

Thank you rgisondi!

I did that for a preferred operator (Vodafone), plus enforcing the European frequency bands i.o. auto, so that the Watcher doesn't sweep all the 4 bands.
Yet the behaviour is quite unpredictable, first I thought that there is an intermittent contact at the card-Jornada interface. Then I used also a Jornada 720 with the same result.
Fact is that I have a very low success rate for connecting, must be as low as 10-15%. If the connection fails I have to stop the Watcher, suspend, extract the card, soft reset and restart the Watcher. I have noticed that my chances are better if starting the Watcher first and then inserting the card after about 3 seconds.

How big is in your case the success rate for connecting, please, is it significantly higher?

I have sold all my jornada. But I experimented the same problem that you have. I think that you must accept the
thing as it is if you want still use a Jornada 72x with a 3g solution.