Qualcomm Gobi 1000 modem
This device is available under a variety of Vendor names and models - one of the most common appears to be HP / Lenovo UN2400.
I bought a couple on eBay as "HP / Dell / Qualcomm T77Z039.04 UMTS" cards for €5 each. If I could get them working, nice; if not, it's only €5. I bought two simply because I have two APU 4D4s and I like to keep things consistent.
I would expect the process for many other Qualcomm devices to be very similar.
Here are some links to the documentation and/or download sites I found which helped me to get these cards working:
https://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1008200.html
https://thinkwiki.de/Qualcomm_Gobi_2000_unter_Linux_installieren
https://drivers.softpedia.com/get/NETWORK-CARD/OTHER-NETWORK-CARDS/HP-Multi-WWAN-Driver-Installer-100.shtml
https://github.com/kicer/gobi_loader
https://github.com/kicer/gobi_loader/blob/master/60-gobi.rules
https://techship.com/faq/how-to-step-by-step-set-up-a-data-connection-over-qmi-interface-using-qmicli-and-in-kernel-driver-qmi-wwan-in-linux/
Plug in the card
I plugged the card into slot J14 (the middle mini PCIe connector) - this supports the USB interface.
The SIM card slot for J14 is the one nearest to the board mounting hole, and the SIM card goes in with the contacts facing downwards (ie: away from the PCB), and the sliced-off corner outermost (ie: nearest to the mounting hole). The socket has a latching mechanism which should click and hold the card in place until you push the card slightly in again.
After powering on the APU and booting into Linux I could then see in dmesg:
usbserial: USB Serial support registered for Qualcomm USB modem qcserial 3-1.3:1.0: Qualcomm USB modem converter detected usb 3-1.3: Qualcomm USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB0
lsusb showed this new USB device:
# lsusb Bus 001 Device 003: ID 03f0:201d HP, Inc un2400 Gobi Wireless Modem (QDL mode) Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0438:7900 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
As you can see, the modem is detected, and is in "QDL" mode, meaning it's ready to download Qualcomm firmware (without which it does nothing useful).
Getting the firmware
This is the tricky part.
For whatever reason, Qualcomm happily sells hardware but does not make the firmware to use it available for download. They seem to assume that anyone using one of these cards will be doing so:
- in a laptop
- running MS Windows
- from a vendor who also supplies drivers for the card
So, if you're using this in a router running Linux, none of the above apply.
You should be able to obtain the firmware using one or other of the links I've put at the top of this page.
I managed to download a driver from https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/downloads/ds001302 and when run under Wine it expanded to provide me with a .msi file but I was unsuccessful in extracting anything from this.
I then managed to find and download http://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp42501-43000/sp42869.exe which when run under Wine gave me (amongst a load of other Windows stuff) a directory tree SWSetup/SP42869/QCImages/Source/Packages containing 11 numbered directories, each containing different versions of amss.mbn and apps.mbn files.
The numbered directories apparently correspond to different mobile service providers, so I used the files from directory number 6, which is "generic". These later turned out to work (with a UK Tesco SIM card roaming on the German T-Mobile network, incidentally).
Loading the firmware
Put the firmware files amss.mbn and apps.mbn into /lib/firmware/gobi and install the package gobi-loader
This package should apparently include a file /etc/udev/rules.d/60-gobi.rules
For some reason this didn't get installed on my system, so I fetched it from git and put it in place manually.
After rebooting the machine (I think a hardware power cycle may be necessary, but I haven't researched this fully; I did it anyway) the firmware should get loaded during module setup, and now lsusb will show you:
# lsusb Bus 003 Device 004: ID 03f0:1f1d HP, Inc un2400 Gobi Wireless Modem Bus 003 Device 002: ID 0438:7900 Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Note that the vendor ID 03f0 remains the same but the device ID 201d is now 1f1d.
You should also now see in dmesg:
usb 3-1.3: USB disconnect, device number 3 qcserial ttyUSB0: Qualcomm USB modem converter now disconnected from ttyUSB0 qcserial 3-1.3:1.0: device disconnected usb 3-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-pci usb 3-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=03f0, idProduct=1f1d, bcdDevice= 0.01 usb 3-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0 usb 3-1.3: Product: HP un2400 Mobile Broadband Module usb 3-1.3: Manufacturer: HP un2400 Mobile Broadband Module qcserial 3-1.3:1.0: Qualcomm USB modem converter detected usb 3-1.3: Qualcomm USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB0 qcserial 3-1.3:1.2: Qualcomm USB modem converter detected usb 3-1.3: Qualcomm USB modem converter now attached to ttyUSB1 usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_wdm qmi_wwan 3-1.3:1.3: cdc-wdm0: USB WDM device qmi_wwan 3-1.3:1.3 wwan0: register 'qmi_wwan' at usb-0000:00:13.0-1.3, WWAN/QMI device, 52:c4:8c:04:f0:5d
Talking to the modem
At this point you now have two devices /dev/ttyUSB0 and /dev/ttyUSB1 and you can talk to the second one using a terminal emulator such as minicom:
# minicom -D /dev/ttyUSB1 Welcome to minicom 2.8 OPTIONS: I18n Port /dev/ttyUSB1, 11:56:48 Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys ATI Manufacturer: QUALCOMM INCORPORATED Model: 88 Revision: D1020-SUUAASGA-4352 1 [Apr 14 2008 19:00:00] IMEI: 980049001741249 +GCAP: +CGSM,+DS OK
(Press Ctrl-A Q Enter to exit.)
Other AT commands you might find useful (also see links below for more):
| AT+COPS? | Show current mode, network operator and access technology |
| +COPS: 0,0,"T-Mobile D",0 means T-Mobile D (ie: Germany) using GSM | |
| AT+CNUM | Show the mobile phone number from the SIM card (doesn't necessarily work) |
| AT+CREG? | Show network registration status |
| +CREG: 0,5 means GSM registered, roaming | |
| AT+CSQ | Show signal quality |
| +CSQ: 8,99 means Signal strength 8 (not too bad), error rate undetectable |
Turning it into a network interface
Install the libqmi-utils package and see what it will tell you about the card:
# qmicli --device=/dev/cdc-wdm0 --device-open-proxy --dms-get-ids
[/dev/cdc-wdm0] Device IDs retrieved:
ESN: '802F8A66'
IMEI: '980049001741249'
MEID: 'A10000109F8D7A'
Check which data format the card is going to use:
# qmicli --device=/dev/cdc-wdm0 --get-expected-data-format 802-3
If you want to switch from 802-3 mode to raw-ip mode:
# ip link set dev wwan0 down # echo Y > /sys/class/net/wwan0/qmi/raw_ip # ip link set dev wwan0 up # qmicli --device=/dev/cdc-wdm0 --get-expected-data-format raw-ip
If you use the device in raw IP mode, you need a DHCP client which can understand this type of interface. ISC's dhcpc doesn't, so the best bet is to install the udhcpc package and use that.
If you use the device in 802.3 mode, ISC's dhcpc works fine.
The following worked for me to get data connectivity (this was documented from the very first time I got it working, so the following commands can probably be improved upon):
# qmi-network /dev/cdc-wdm0 start
Profile at '/etc/qmi-network.conf' not found...
Checking data format with 'qmicli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --wda-get-data-format '...
error: couldn't create client for the 'wda' service: QMI protocol error (31): 'InvalidServiceType'
Device link layer protocol not retrieved: WDA unsupported
Starting network with 'qmicli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --wds-start-network= --client-no-release-cid '...
Saving state at /tmp/qmi-network-state-cdc-wdm0... (CID: 15)
Saving state at /tmp/qmi-network-state-cdc-wdm0... (PDH: 31067528)
Network started successfully
# udhcpc -q -f -n -i wwan0
udhcpc: started, v1.30.1
udhcpc: sending discover
udhcpc: sending select for 10.141.147.3
udhcpc: lease of 10.141.147.3 obtained, lease time 7200
ip: RTNETLINK answers: File exists
# ifconfig wwan0
wwan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 10.141.147.3 netmask 255.255.255.248 broadcast 10.141.147.7
inet6 fe80::5019:5dff:fed2:9d8 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether 52:19:5d:d2:09:d8 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 2 bytes 612 (612.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 9 bytes 1430 (1.3 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
10.141.147.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.248 U 0 0 0 wwan0
# route add 8.8.8.8 dev wwan0
# ping 8.8.8.8
PING 8.8.8.8 (8.8.8.8) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=1 ttl=114 time=1977 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=2 ttl=114 time=1037 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=3 ttl=114 time=457 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=4 ttl=114 time=220 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=5 ttl=114 time=156 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=6 ttl=114 time=137 ms
64 bytes from 8.8.8.8: icmp_seq=7 ttl=114 time=156 ms
^C
--- 8.8.8.8 ping statistics ---
7 packets transmitted, 7 received, 0% packet loss, time 6004ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 137.465/591.270/1977.211/639.323 ms, pipe 2
# route del 8.8.8.8 dev wwan0
# qmi-network /dev/cdc-wdm0 stop
Profile at '/etc/qmi-network.conf' not found...
Loading previous state from /tmp/qmi-network-state-cdc-wdm0...
Previous CID: 15
Previous PDH: 31067528
Stopping network with 'qmicli -d /dev/cdc-wdm0 --wds-stop-network=31067528 --client-cid=15 '...
Network stopped successfully
Clearing state at /tmp/qmi-network-state-cdc-wdm0...
If you want to use 802.3 mode instead of raw-ip, the commands above are identical except that instead of udhcpc -q -f -n -i wwan0 you would use dhclient wwan0.
To reset the modem (for example, if you've been using it for data connectivity and you then want to use some AT commands again), the simplest way seems to be to unload and reload the kernel modules for it:
rmmod qcserial rmmod qmi_wwan modprobe qcserial modprobe qmi_wwan
Don't panic
Some documentation you will find (including some that's linked from this page) suggests that you can do a quick-and-dirty minicom replacement using:
cat </dev/ttyUSB1 & echo ATI >/dev/ttyUSB1
This will appear to work, however the next time you start minicom (or for all I know, the next time you try to do anything that involves ttyUSB1) you will find that the application locks up and cannot talk to the modem. If it's minicom, you can't even exit (although you can cleanly kill it from another login session).
You then find that you can't rmmod the qcserial module:
# rmmod qcserial rmmod: ERROR: Module qcserial is in use
Here is how to kill the process/es which are locking the device:
# ls -alR /sys/bus/usb/drivers/qcserial /sys/bus/usb/drivers/qcserial: total 0 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 0 Mar 3 15:05 . drwxr-xr-x 12 root root 0 Mar 3 10:29 .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 3 15:12 1-1.3:1.0 -> ../../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 3 15:12 1-1.3:1.2 -> ../../../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:13.0/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.2 --w------- 1 root root 4096 Mar 3 15:12 bind lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Mar 3 15:12 module -> ../../../../module/usbserial --w------- 1 root root 4096 Mar 3 15:05 uevent --w------- 1 root root 4096 Mar 3 15:12 unbind # echo "1-1.3:1.2" >/sys/bus/usb/drivers/qcserial/unbind (kill from another terminal any process which got stuck trying to use ttyUSB1) # rmmod qcserial # modprobe qcserial
Minicom, or anything else which needs to use ttyUSB1, will now be happy again.
Alternatively, if you know what process is connected to ttyUSB1, you can simply kill that with the same effect:
# ps ax | grep cat 8815 pts/1 S 0:00 cat 8846 pts/0 S+ 0:00 grep cat # kill 8815
This is a much simpler and quicker solution if you know what you did to lock up the device, but the slightly more complex approach outlined above will work for any process whether you know what it is or not.
Also
Nice discussion / guidance about using a Quectel EC25 (which I don't think I'll get for €5 - more like €50):
https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/issues/344
https://forums.quectel.com/uploads/short-url/xnztA07u1c4hilREu66LYIY6NGR.pdf also distinctly suggests that this thing can do voice as well.
Useful notes on AT commands: https://www.emnify.com/developer-blog/at-commands-for-cellular-modules
More on AT commands: https://www.smssolutions.net/tutorials/gsm/
https://www.smssolutions.net/tutorials/
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