I'm getting bounced back and forth between Acer, Sprint, and Sierra Wireless - no one seems willing to help me use my existing cellular broadband USB modem on my new Aspire One. The problem seems to be missing drivers in the Linpus Linux installation on the Aspire One.

I have a Sierra Wireless Aircard 595U, which has been initialized and works well with my Windows XP laptop.

I found directions at Sprint (PDF from: http://www.nextel.com/en/software_do...ard_u595.shtml) and
Sierra Wireless (http://www.sierrawireless.com/faq/ShowFAQ.aspx?ID=607). Unfortunately, the Sprint directions result in an error message. The Sierra Wireless directions assume that you already know your way around Linux and command syntax, which I don't. (Back in the dinosaur ages, I was a DOS command line user, so I'm not totally stupid, but I am a Linux n00b and there are enough differences that I get lost quickly.) Acer flatly refused to help me (which means I won't be recommending them even though I otherwise like the Aspire One).

I'm hoping that someone on this forum will have successfully done this installation and can tell me where I need to deviate from or add to the instructions given, or will be willing to work with me to get this working.

However, if anyone knows of a Sprint-compatible cellular modem that DOES work with the Aspire One without a huge installation hassle, please let me know the make and model. I'm not too proud to take an out of the box solution at this point. ;o)

One last little weirdness: I found a post on this site that recommended using sudo wvdialconf to autoconfigure, and no modem was detected. The error message included a question "did you configure it properly with set serial? No idea what this is, I'll have to do some more searches, and then recommended a FAQ at http://open.nit.ca/wiki/?WvDial. What came up there was a rather iffy looking links aggregator site. I have a hard time believing that this came from the Acer installed OS. What did I just do?

I use the same brand and model of broadband cellular modem. Here is what I do.

1. Install Kppp. If you don't use KDE then figure out what modem controlling software you have available. They will all have these features in common. These features are all required to control any modem.

2. Open Kppp

3. Create a new connection like this. Press the configure button. A new window will appear. Click on the "new" button. Select manual setup. A new window will appear titled New Account - Kppp.

4. On the tab labeled Dial: Put a name for the connection into the box labeled Connection Name. I called mine Sprint. Next to the box labeled Phone Number is a button labeled Add. Press that. A new window will appear labeled Add Phone Number - Kppp. Enter #777 into the phone number box and press the OK button.

5. Back on the window labeled New Account - Kppp and on the tab labeled Dial look under the phone number box. You will see a list box labeled Authentication. Click on the list box and select "Script-based". Uncheck the box labeled Store Password.

6. You will not need to create a login script. The modem handles all of that. So you don't have to do anything else to configure the modem. Just click the OK button at the bottom of the New Account box.

7. To use the modem you just plug the modem into a usb port. Wait for Linux to find it. Then open Kppp. You will see the name of the connection that you configured in the list box at the top of the window. Just click on the connect button. It should log you into Sprint in about ten seconds.

We had an incompatibility issue with our ACER and Sierra Mercury aircard.
With installation of the Sierra aircard and the AT&T communication software some of the drivers on the ACER would be wiped out. We had no keyboard, sound, etc, so we were forced to use the onscreen keyboard and restore from an earlier point.

We tried this several times and at each installation the drivers were wiped and we were forced to restore.

The ACER worked fine w/out the ATT aircard, but the would not work with it

I had done hours of forum research and found that many folks were having Acer/aircard issues. But no answers!

I heard that an AT& T tech said that it was a known fact that no aircard would work with ACERS.

We emailed back and forth with ACER techs. We even phoned the ACER support line. The Acer techs wanted us to disable our links software, but our home wireless worked great. The problem was only with cellular broadband, but no wanted to believe this. The Acer tech even wanted us to wipe our hard drive. Thank goodness we didn’t do that.

Everyone seemed aware of the problem, but we could find no answers.

I was about to give-up, when I heard about the communications software from Sierra.


To make a long story short: THE AT&T comm. software was our problem.

Here is what worked for us:

Get to a restore point before you ever even saw the Sierra Mercury USB aircard.
Make sure not a scrap of the original ATT communications/Sierra drivers is left
Do NOT install any software from ATT
Do NOT even insert your aircard…..wait
Go to the Sierra site and download the 3G watcher for your product
Install the 3G watcher
3G watcher will unsuccessfully look for the devise
Now and only now insert the aircard

It will take a few seconds to find the devise and then to connect, but it works.
We have rebooted over and over…. And so far …. all drivers are functionable, the ACER works great and the aircard works great

Successful!!!! Successful!!!! Successful!!!!


I am a little concerned that the ATT communications software will try to load when we insert the aircard, but so far that hasn’t happened.

totally new to this.
can anybody tell me what kppp is?
and also, i have o2 mobile broadband in ireland.
will this fix work for me also?

Thank you.
I followed your instructions to use 3G card modem.

I had a sierra wireless 3G usb device and on a dual booting laptop Acer Aspire One with Fedora 10 and XP Home set up the connection in XP and verified it was working then booted to Fedora 10 and under NetworkManager "edit connections" there is a tab for "Mobile Broadband" my device was listed there and made it work from there.

I no longer use the usb device at this time.