Friday before I left work I kicked off the upgrade to Mac OS 10.6.3 on the MacBook Pro (MBP)  I use at work. I’d already upgrade my personal MacBook at home (that I got a deal on at MicroCenter) and I didn’t have any observeable problems or issues and I was confident that I could upgrade and not bork my work environment.

When I arrived back into work on Monday it looked like the upgrade had completed. I logged into the MBP and  my Bluetooth MagicMouse wasn’t working, and all  bluetooth settings were unavailable and grayed out (both on the status bar, and in System Preferences).

I figured something had gotten out of sync during the upgrade and I thought a reboot would fix the problem. Rebooting didn’t fix the problem, but manually reinstalling the upgrade did solve the problem and Bluetooth is active and settings are accessible.

You can manually get the upgrade at:

http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1017

However, when I tried to sync with my phone, a Sony Ericsson C902, the connection keeps dropping. So Bluetooth in 10.6.3 might be a bit flaky.

Taken on a cool night with a full moon. I don’t like how my Panasonic takes nights shots, they seem to noisy (specklie) to be. I still think my 6 year old Canon S200 did a better job at night, and overall!

http://wiki.sukimashita.com/Tango_Symbian60_Theme

Grab the  Symbian60 3rd Edition (Regular, FP1) one for the N73.

http://timony.com/mickzblog/2007/10/09/ubuntu-bluetooth-sd-card/

If you have T-Mobile T-Zones Internet service for your phone in the US you should be able to use the following procedure to surf the web on your computer using your N73.

First find your Phone’s bluetooth device address (or ID), by typing

*#2820#

into your phone.

You should see a sequence of numbers and letters that look something like this on the screen:

000ABC22BC33

Write it down in this format, (with a colon after every 2nd character):

00:0A:BC:22:BC:33

Next make a backup copy of this file

/etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf

For example:

sudo cp  /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf /etc/bluetooth/rfcomm.conf.org

I’m going to presume you’ve never edited this file before, and you can change it to look like this (using the bluetooth device number you discovered):

#
# RFCOMM configuration file.
#

rfcomm0 {
 #      # Automatically bind the device at startup
 	bind yes;
 #
 #      # Bluetooth address of the device
 	device 00:0A:BC:22:BC:33;
 #
 #      # RFCOMM channel for the connection
	channel 2;
 #
 #      # Description of the connection
	comment "Nokia N73";
 }

If you have edited this file before and are already using rfcomm0, then create a new entry named rcomm1 and replace rcomm1 with any other references I make to rcomm0. Also, make sure you get all the semi-colons after each entry in the file.

Next copy the gprs-connect-chat and the gprs-disconnect-chat files from:

http://davesource.com/Solutions/20070520.T-Mobile-Nokia-E65-Ubuntu-Linux.html#networking

In the gprs-connect-chat replace line 47:

OK              'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","internet2.voicestream.com","",0,0'

With this:

OK              'AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","wap.voicestream.com","",0,0'

Move the 2 files to /etc/ppp/peers:

sudo mv  gprs-connect-chat /etc/ppp/peers

sudo mv  gprs-disconnect-chat  /etc/ppp/peers

Next create a new file in /etc/peers named gprs and copy’n'paste the following (the gprs script that davesource.com uses didn’t work for me):

# GPRS for T-Mobile USA
/dev/rfcomm0 # device bound to T610 phone
230400 # speed
defaultroute # use the network for the default route
usepeerdns # use the DNS servers from the remote network
nodetach # keep pppd in the foreground
crtscts # hardware flow control
lock # lock the serial port
noauth # don’t expect modem to authenticate itself
local # don’t use Carrier Detect or Data Terminal Ready
debug

connect /etc/ppp/peers/gprs-connect-chat
disconnect /etc/ppp/peers/gprs-disconnect-chat

Now your ready to test the connection. First stop networking:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop

Next, turn on bluetooth on your phone and connect to it. Once your connect issue the following commands:

rfcomm bind all
 pppd call gprs

When your done, control-c will stop the ppp connection, then run this command:

 rfcomm release all

If you’ve more than one entry defined in your rfcomm.conf file, try using:

frcomm bind rfcomm0

And replace rfcomm0 with rfcomm1 or rfcomm2 …

To web-surf you will need to set your browser to use the following proxy:

216.155.165.50:8080

But, ssh & VPN won’t work, just web-browsing at dial-up speed! However, it might be possible to tunnel ssh and other services.

The following links were a lot of help in aiding me in getting this to work:

http://www.yepthatsme.com/2004/11/09/ppp-chat-scripts-for-t-mobile-sony-ericsson-t610-gprs-via-bluetooth-with-debian/

http://digitalife.wordpress.com/2007/07/31/using-your-mobile-phone-as-a-gprs-modem-with-ubuntu-linux-via-dku-2-usb-cable/

I used the scripts from here to get the laptop to connect (with minor changes):

http://davesource.com/Solutions/20070520.T-Mobile-Nokia-E65-Ubuntu-Linux.html#bluetooth

I need to clean-up/rewrite this posting, and put in proper references to sites that helped me get this working.

Copies of the configuration files are here:

rfcomm.conf

gprs, gprs-connect-chat, gprs-disconnect-chat

http://blogs.gnome.org/dcbw/2007/11/05/t-mo-got-no-spec-trum/

The US has 6 bands that are or will be used for cellular communications:

• 700MHz – the new band, to be auctioned in February next year. There “open access” rules tied to about 1/3rd of the spectrum to stop carrier locks on devices.
• 800MHz SMR – where Nextel operates; Nextel bought up taxi dispatch operators nationwide and converted them over to iDEN back when only 2 cellular licenses were available in each market.
• 850MHz – the original cellular band, initially AMPS but now being converted over to GSM and CDMA
• 1900MHz – the PCS band, digital from the start and where Sprint and Voicestream (now T-Mobile) entered the cellular industry. All the major players have spectrum here.
• 1700MHz – the AWS bands auctioned last year for broadband data like HSPA and EVDO
• 2500MHz – the “educational” band in which both Sprint and Clearwire have vast holdings and will deploy nationwide WiMAX networks over the next two years

And it looks like my mobile phone carrier has the least bandwidt, for now, as they’re a later entry in the US market

I also got a Kingston 2 GB MiniSD-Card for my phone (for $20.99), with an adaptor so I can plug the card into my laptop. It looks the card reader on my Dell 700m now works! Previously it didn’t and there was no way to get it to work as there wasn’t a driver for the chipset Dell used.

I went for the free shipping is estimated at 7 to 9 days, but if I’m lucky they’ll ship from the local warehouse and it won’t take too long.

This is good news:

http://antrix.net/journal/techtalk/nokia_n73.html

The phone can be mounted as a USB drive so I had no trouble transferring photos to my Linux running computer and had no need of any special software. Nevertheless, I’ll be installing the Nokia PC Suite at work to get our Outlook calendar syncing.

Which means I’ll hold off on ordering a Bluetooth dongle from Newegg, and see if a cable is included with the Phone. Buy.com doesn’t say what’s in the box, but the same phone from Nokia’s US site shows it ships with a cable, but for $100 more.

I’ll need a memory card to hold pics and save on data charges from sending pics via T-Mobile’s network. But, I’ll wait until I get the phone before I order anything else related to the phone, except for either screen protector or a case to protect it.