BusyBee OSX

Getting OS X to work with Siemens S55 Mobile

I was going to countryside during Easter and needed to get my Powerbook to work with my newly acquired Siemens S55 GPRS phone. I saw a couple of sites talking about Apple's GPRS support for Ericsson phones but to my dismay, when I look at the list of IRDA modems in the list of recognised modems under System Preferences, Network, IRDA modems, there was no Siemens S55 or ANY Siemens phone for that matter. I fired up Google and went from link to link. Below, I will detail how I eventually got it working on my Siemens S55 connected to Australia's Telstra GPRS network. It should work too with other providers as well as equivalent GPRS mobile phones. First go to Ross Barkman's fabulous Mobile Phone site here that made it all happen and download the GENERIC GPRS Scripts. IMPORTANT: For some strange reason, the Siemens GPRS scripts DO NOT WORK so do not download that

1. Drop the modem scripts under Library->Modem Scripts
2. Open Network Preferences and select the PPP tab
3. Create a new location - call it "GPRS" or whatever
4. Select "Show: 'IrDA Modem Port'" (or a USB or Bluetooth serial port if you are using those)
5. Enter your ISP name in "Service Provider".
6. Enter in "Telephone Number" the APN provided by your network in my case "telstra.internet", or NONE if it has no APN.
7. Enter the Account name & Password (any junk will do usually coz this is just to allow the connect button to be enabled later, most providers do not use the account name and password as far as I know especially Telstra)
8. Press the "PPP Options..." button
9. Make sure that 'Send PPP echo packets' is not selected
10. Select the IrDA Modem (or the equivalent USB port name) tab in Network Preferences
11. Set 'Modem: "Generic GPRS CID1"' or whatever if other provider (test one at a time)
12. Follow procedure in phone's manual to turn on phone's Infrared port
13. Line up phone IR port facing IR port on PowerBook
14. Open Internet Connect
15. Select 'IrDA Modem Port' (or the equivalent USB port name)
16. Click 'Connect'
17. No dial/modem sounds are heard during connection process

I've also followed Ross advice and made sure Show IRDA status in menu bar and show modem status in menu bar is ticked. With this configuration its really cool. Since the SIemens phone is at GPRS Level 10 or something, I can get top speed as if its connected via the modem through a landline. Since Telstra have a 1 month free GPRS access, I've planned to make full use of this. I think it would probably be more cool with a bluetooth connection but I've only tried so far with infrared. Have fun!

BusybeeOnline Site Relocated

Today, I've just changed the host for the busybeeonline site to a much much much much cheaper site. It cost me only USD 40 / year (through a referral discount) having the exactly (if not better feature) than my old site. Some people might actually experienced some problems connecting in the past 24 hours while the dns records gets updated on the dns servers. You may wanna check out my hosting provider http://www.icdsoft.com They even have an option to spread out .com or .net etc domain name registration into the annual fees so you don't have to pay the 16-35 USD that some site are registering for.

Speeding Up Your System

Carl Bond wrote a very good and detail article on how to use renice to speed up your OS X. Its a good read. Also watch out for the interesting links that can be found on his site too. Thanks Carl!

OS X Processes Table

I've come across a neat site by Gordon Davisson that shows a list of processes by both system and user processes. The site can be found here