Using the Timeport 260 with GRPS and Orange in the UK

Summary: In this page I'll discuss how I got my palm to communicate with my Motorola Timeport 260 GPRS Cell phone

This is the first version of this document. Please feel free to send comments to Angus@malcolmhardie.com

Account setup

Your service provider will need to provide a gprs data service.
It is not enough to provide a wap based GPRS service (as BTCellnet does in the UK).
it must support data service as well.

You will also need to know the DNS server address and the APN which is something like orangeinternet

If you account is correctly set up then we can proceed

Setting up the palm

To connect the phone to the palm you need to configure two sections in the preferences application. First you have to set up the connection to the phone and then you need to set up the internet access.

Phone <-> Palm Connection

First open the prefs application. Then using the menu in the top right corner select connection. Then click the new... button at the bottom left of the screen.

The edit window will appear. Into this window you can type the name of the connection (Timeport GPRS is good but you can choose anything).
Then select the connection method menu and change it to IrCOMM to PC.
(Yes I know the phone is more like a modem but it behaves more like another computer)
Then click details and in the following window select speed as 57600 and Flow ctl as automatic. Then click OK to leave the details window and OK to leave the connection window

The connection is now set up.

Palm <-> Internet

Select the network panel of the prefs window using the menu in the top right corner. Then select new from the service menu. A new untitled connection will appear on the screen. Type in a descriptive name ( GPRS is good but anything will do) and then select the connection that you created in the previous step.

Next type in a username and password. Many services apparently don't require this but with the palm it seems to help. With orange in the UK I use the APN name orangeinternet as the username and password pass but it may not matter. It just seems that the palm works better with them there.

Next click details to move onto the next screen

First select PPP in the connection type menu if it is not already visible

Then ensure that the Query DNS checkbox is not selected

Enter the DNS server addresses that you have into the primary and secondary DNS boxes

with orange in the uk the primary DNS is 158.43.192.1 and the secondary DNS is 158.43.128.1

Then ensure that the IP Address box is selected and the word automatic appears next to it

Thats good everything look ok? We can move on to the script. This is a bit complicated so type carefully

First click the script button in the bottom right of the screen.

Then in the window that follows change the window until the script looks like this:

send: AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","orangeinternet",,0,0;
send CR:
send: atd*99#
send CR:
END

(If you have trouble with this it may help to realise that you can click on END and you get a list of possible options. if you select send then you can type in extra text like the above instructions)

Then click OK to leave the script and OK to leave the details windows.

The phone

The motorola Timeport 260 has an infra-red window on the top end next to the aerial. To enable this you need to hit
Menu->Phone Setup->Activate IR Port
and then hit ok.

point the phone at the IR port of the palm and then hit connect in the network window. The display should show a box saying Connecting then Negotiating and then the box will disappear and the connect button will change to a disconnect button

You can now test out the connection by attempting to go to a location on the internet. There are lots of programs that you can use to do this