Unlocking the mc8755 WWAN card

From Foomagic

It has taken me 18 months or so, but I have finally gotten the WWAN card operational. Mobile data is still very expensive over here, and HSDPA is only supplied in areas other than the major cities by the monopoly telco (telstra) Also, they are shutting down their CDMA network soon, so I decided to upgrade to a NEXTG phone. This gave me a sim card which I could use to try out the adapter without having to sign up to any additional plans or contracts, so I decided to try out how the card works under linux. The first problem of course was getting the card unlocked, as its locked by default from Lenovo to the Vodafone network in Australia. Calls to IBM support resulted in the advice that they don't have the code, and I would have to call vodafone. A call to a confused vodafone rep led me to believe they didn't have the code either, however, they have a web page on their Australian site into which you can enter your phones IMEI number. After many emails between myself, IBM, Lenovo and Sierra Wireless, I finally managed to get the unlock codes from IBM. (Kudos here to Sierra, after IBM telling me several different reasons why my card couldn't be unlocked, Sierra told me that if IBM ask them on my behalf, they would supply the unlock code. I forwarded this email back to IBM and thankfully recieved the codes back from the IBM rep the next day. They IBM/Lenovo guys were good throughout, but I am a little perplexed as to why they couldn't have done this from the start.) To find your phones IMEI you can either use minicom or kermit and similar, or just echo commands to the device. First you need to make sure the card is recognised and the kernel knows about it, which you can read about here. Using the Sierra mc8755 WWAN card under linux Once the card is recognised by the kernel, open up two xterms and in one type 'cat /dev/ttyUSB0' Then you can echo AT commands to the modem and it should respond back in the other window. You could also use minicom or some other serial communicator. To find your cards IMEI number, echo the following command, and you should get output similar to below.

echo AT+GSN > /dev/ttyUSB0

AT+GSN
358635990336767
OK

The returned number is your IMEI code, this is also stamped on the actuall card inside the laptop. Now all you need is to get the unlock code from either your carrier or IBM. Once you have the codes, open up two terms again and 'cat /dev/ttyUSB0' in one and echo the following command in the other.

echo 'AT+CLCK="PN",0,"12345678"' > /dev/ttyUSB0

Replace the 12345678 above with your unlock code, and the modem should respond with OK. Thats it, you should now be able to use any carriers sim card in the laptop and connect to their network.

Additional info can be found on Thinkwiki here.