My poor Q1b HSDPA is sitting in pieces on my desk right now. Naked, stripped of all traces of wireless wan hardware and feeling decidedly the Un-Mobile PC. Its only recompense being that the Everun is now fully mobile and free of its hotspot chains.
The donated part was the Option GTM351E 1.8mbps HSDPA PCI-Express Mini module. Taking it out of the Q1b wasn’t as easy as it could be as you have to remove the motherboard but fitting it in the Everun was straight forward. You can see that I’ve used a plastic stick-on antenna. Installing the software was fairly straight forward but I kept getting firmware errors when trying to search for a network. I tried everything from rebooting through re-installing and changing pretty much every option that was possible. In the end I gave up and chatted to the guys on IRC that where following the progress via UMPCPortal/live. Then someone mentioned the function buttons and hardware switches and I was demonstrating the LAN on/odd switch, the LCD on/off switch and the WAN on/off swi……Yes, you can guess what I had forgotten to do can’t you. After enabling the WAN through the WAN ON/OFF button (FN-F8 if you get stuck!) everything came up tutty fruity. To cover up my embarrassment I even did a little dance and JKK, being the nice fellow blogger that he is, has even edited and posted part of the Ustream video to show the relevant part. Thanks mate!! Rodfather has also posted it. I would blame James Kendrick but it was actually Rodfather that started this whole project as he admits in his post. Guilty!!!
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If you have 271 minutes free (!) or are having trouble getting to sleep, the full version of the operation was captured as a video at Ustream.
The Option GTM351E installed in the Everun and the, now famous, Fn-F8 maneuver!
Well at least we know it works now. The aerial reception is so-so and I need to test out different positioning but when the signal as there I’m getting 1mbps downloads with no problem. Battery life doesn’t seem to have been affected and it may even be a touch better when the WLAN is turned off. Funnily enough, there’s no hardware button for that!
Here’s a short overview video from today which shows how where the module fits into the Everun. I will be doing some more testing so feel free to ask questions in the Raon Digital forum and lets hope that Raon Digital get cracking with wider availability of their HSDPA version of the Everun. So far I’ve only seen UMPCshop.nl and Tegatech.com.au selling it.
