[QtMoko] GSM not turning on / registering

[Michael Spacefalcon]

Nick <openmoko-community at njw.me.uk> wrote:

> I tried the SIM in another phone and it does work, and another SIM 
> in this one does not (both the same network).

OK, good observation.  The problem is now narrowed down to the FR,
rather than network coverage in your area, your service subscription
or the SIM issued for it.

There is one more thing we need to check before proceeding further,
though.  That other phone you used to confirm your SIMs as good, what
kind of phone is it?  Is it 2G or 3G?  If the latter, please look
through its menus and see if there is an option to force 2G mode.
The reason for this exploration is to eliminate the possibility that
GSM (aka 2G) service in your geographical area stopped working,
knocking out Free Firmware phones while closed proprietary Apple/
Samsung/GTA04/etc still work on UMTS..

(In the event that some part of the world with a nonzero population of
 Free Firmware phone users does kill its GSM service, there are two
 possible ways for us to react to that development: either try to
 liberate one of the newer 3G+ phones/modems, or build our own GSM 2G
 network for our own use.  If/when this situation ever occurs in my
 part of the world, I will do the latter, as I consider GSM/2G to be
 superior to 3G crap both technically and morally.)

Assuming that your email TLD matches your location, you are doing this
in the UK, right?  Do you know if your service provider operates a
900 MHz GSM network, a 1800 MHz one, or both?

> Revision is:
> GSM: gsm_ac_gp_fd_pu_em_cph_ds_vc_cal35_ri_36_amd8_ts0-Moko11
> So Moko11, I guess ;)

Any particular reason you have not yet upgraded to leo2moko-r1 aka
moko12?  While it is very unlikely that performing this fw update will
fix the problem, running fw with a published Corresponding Source and
a linker map listing will likely be a prerequisite for some of the
more advanced troubleshooting steps, so you might as well do it now..

> > http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Manually_using_GSM
> [...]
> That's a good idea. I'm hitting a snag before I get very far, 
> though. Namely that I don't know which process is in charge of the 
> GSM, so which one to kill to stop the phone accessing.

According to this web page:

http://winterveldt.co.za/leo2moko-p3.html

the command you need is:

/etc/init.d/qtmoko-neo stop

(Whether the intent is to talk manual AT commands to the modem or to
 reflash it, the step of stopping QtMoko should be the same.)

> lsof would probably tell me, but I can't install it because it's 
> tough to get the wifi to work (which I generally don't care about).  

Huh?  WiFi?  While you do need an ssh connection into the Neo, why
does it have to be WiFi?  Doesn't QtMoko support eth-over-usb
networking like the others?

HTH,
SF