Tuesday, September 19, 2006

Installing Sierra 860 on Mac

A little more fidgety than the Sprint card. Basically, Cingular has an agreement with two software providers who charge anywhere from $40 to $99 to use the Sierra Card with OSX. Silly, isn't it? Mac does have more built in support for these cards, but not the 860.

I tried this today, and it failed miserably. However, I have used it before and it worked great. Here is the link to the drivers for download. http://www.auralogic.com/3g/ There is an install guide there as well, which makes it easy if you know your way around a mac. If you don't, here is the dumbed down version:

1. The download of the drivers will put a zip file onto the desktop. Open it and you will have a new folder on the desktop for the 860 aircard. If you open the folder, you will have two files and a text file with install directions.

2. Copy (the squiggly square plus c key) or drag the file Aircard8X0PCCard.kext to /System/Library/Extensions/
~You get there by double clicking the hard drive icon on the desktop. Click on the top left the icon that indicates several lines below each other. Find the System folder and click the arrow to expand. Find the Library folder and click to expand. Find the Extensions folder and click to expand. You will see a bunch of files. Drag or copy the kext file into the extensions folder.

3. Copy or drag the file Aircard860ModemScript to /Library/Modem Scripts/. Go back to the hard drive icon, find Library and expand. Click modem scripts and expand. Place the above file into the Modem Scripts folder.

Be careful because there is BOTH an Extensions and Modem Scripts folder in both the System folder AND the stand alone Library folder.

4. Click the harddrive icon again and go to Applications. Open it and scroll to terminal. Open it. A DOS like program will open. Cut and paste the following there.

sudo chown -R 0:0 /System/Library/Extensions/Aircard8X0PCCard.kext/

It may ask you for admin password. Enter your admin password again when requested, then close terminal.

restart computer.

5. On the dock there is an icon that looks like a lightswitch. Click that to open "preferences". Go to Network settings.
~ Cingular modem settings in system preferences are as follows. These values, including account/password, are the same for all cingular users.

account name: ISP@CINGULARGPRS.com
password: CINGULAR1
telephone #: isp.cingular

under ppp options, make sure "send ppp echo packets" is NOT selected.
tcp/ip tab should have "using ppp" selected, and nothing else entered.
on the modem tab, select "Aircard860ModemScript"
for convenient dialing/disconnecting, select "show modem status in menu"

Problems? Not sure I can help, but if you need to be talked through this on the phone, call me. Oh, when I say that I mean talking YOU through it, NOT your customer. You will be able to maximize your sales once you learn how to do this successfully.