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Macbook, Merlin XU870 and Parallels

I have been run­ning a Nova­tel Mer­lin XU870 Wire­less card with my Mac­Book Pro for some 5 months now and it is a great way to con­nect to the net at decent speeds (400 to 700kps on aver­age, at times faster) any­where inside you pro­viders area of ser­vice, which for me is most of the Perth’s exten­ded metro area includ­ing the 30 minute plus bus ride to work.

It has been so good and reli­able I ditched my old dia­lup con­nec­tion and have not been temp­ted to get a fixed broad­band con­nec­tion. Sure I have lim­ited band­width 1 Gb (in both dir­ec­tions) a month on my plan, but I have not had any prob­lems plus I can sup­ple­ment it with my phone’s bandwidth.

The main prob­lem has been Apple’ insist­ence that you use their dodgy WWAN sup­port and this is pack­aged in both the 10.4.9 and 10.4.10 updates, which is good if you use your XU870 card to con­nect to the cin­gu­lar net­work in the US and bad for every­body else because it stops the card from functioning.

This is fixed by remov­ing all WWAN files from your sys­tems folder and reboot­ing. You need to delete the fol­low­ing files:

  • /Library/Modem Scripts/WWAN Support
  • /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/WWAN.menu
  • /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANSupport.kext
  • /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANVerizon.kext

You can even use the card to con­nect any vir­tual machine run­ning under Par­al­lels. This is because Par­al­lels lets you assign the Express card slot on my Mac­Book Pro as if it was a USB device. Which is now the cause of my cur­rent problem.

I was check­ing the Three site yes­ter­day and found that I could improve the the­or­et­ical speed on the card from 1.8Mbps to 3.6Mbps by upgrad­ing the card’s firm­ware. So I down­load the firm­ware, which of course is PC only, fired up XP under Par­al­lels and fol­lowed the instruc­tions to the let­ter, only for XP to crash halfway through the pro­cess, with a USB debug error dis­play­ing and a wire­less card that no longer func­tions (post­ing via Dopod as modem).

So if you have Nova­tel Mer­lin XU870 Wire­less card, a Mac­Boook and use Three I strongly recom­mend that you do not try to upgrade the card’s firm­ware through Par­al­lels but find some­body with a Win­dows laptop and use that.

Hop­ing that I can recover the card, by upgrad­ing the firm­ware on a Win­dows laptop, I will let you now what happens.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 11th, 2007 at 9:23 am and is filed under Just geek . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

22 Responses to “Macbook, Merlin XU870 and Parallels”

  1. Shane Says:
    July 11th, 2007 at 5:47 pm

    How do you get par­al­lels run­ning on a Power­Book? I thought it was for mac­tels only.

  2. nick Says:
    July 11th, 2007 at 10:34 pm

    Shane, sorry brain fade this morn­ing, I con­fused my Mac­Book Pro and Power­book. It is my Mac­Book Pro that I run Par­al­lels on. Cor­rec­ted the post to reflect this.

    My Power­book (which is screen­less) uses the XU870 to provide inter­net con­nectiv­ity for my home network.

  3. Spiros Says:
    August 30th, 2007 at 4:47 pm

    Hello Nick. I have prob­lem with XU870 and my Mac­book pro with OS X 10.4.10
    with voda­fone ser­vice in Greece. My sys­tems freezes. Major prob­lem. I tried to do what you say, I delete the files (but I didnt found the last two: /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANSupport.kext
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANVerizon.kext — I see the IOSerialFamily.kext but I can­not open it.) But my sys­tem still freezes. Any idea?

  4. nick Says:
    August 30th, 2007 at 7:57 pm

    Spiros, you prob­ably need to use the Ter­minal applic­a­tion to loc­ate and delete the files. Open up Ter­minal you should find it in your applic­a­tions folder (or down­load iTerm and use that instead). Then type (or cut and paste):
    cd /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/Plugins
    then return, fol­lowed by:
    ls
    that is a lower case LS this will list all files in the folder includ­ing AppleWWANSupport.kext and AppleWWANVerizon.kext. Then type:
    rm AppleWWANSupport.kext
    and return, if this does not work, because you get an error mes­sage or by check­ing with (sorry but it has been three months since I did this):
    ls
    try
    sudo rm AppleWWANSupport.kext
    and enter­ing your pass­word. Then repeat with either
    rm AppleWWANVerizon.kext
    or
    sudo rm AppleWWANVerizon.kext
    then close ter­minal by typ­ing
    exit
    Then restart your com­puter and it should work.

  5. Spiros Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    hello nick, I did that using ter­minal but still my sys­tem freezes. I used a slight dif­fer­ent com­mand because AppleWWANVerizon.kext and AppleWWANSupport.kext are “dir­ect­or­ies” and they needed the com­mand as: “sudo rm –r –f AppleWWANSupport.kext”. Thank you but my sys­tem still freezes. By the way read what they told me from “nova­me­dia” the com­pany that cre­ates the “Voda­fone Mobile Con­nect Software”:

    “Hello,
    Many XU870 will freeze your Mac­Book Pro. Whenever the card tries to con­nect
    to a GPRS sig­nal, the radio inter­fer­ence is so streng it will freeze your
    Mac­Book Pro instantly.
    Many cus­tom­ers have changed the XU870 many times and you should *not* use
    this card in your sys­tem. Please exchange the card to a USB-modem which is
    also offered by Voda­fone to have a suc­cess­ful con­nec­tion! Oth­er­wise you have
    too exchange your MAc­Book Pro to a ver­sion which is bet­ter shiel­ded against
    GPRS interference!”

  6. nick Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 4:17 pm

    Spiros I would totally dis­agree with what “nova­me­dia” said. I have used my Mac­Book Pro and XU870 for 7 months now and at least and hour a day dur­ing that time and 5 days out of 7 in a mov­ing vehicle without ever freez­ing the sys­tem (other than those silly Apple upgrades). Mind you the net­work I use is primar­ily 3G/HSPDA not GPRS (2.5G), though I have been con­nec­ted via GPRS on occa­sions without any problems.

    You might also need to delete the AppleWWANSupport.kext and AppleWWANVerizzon.kext dir­ect­or­ies in ter­minal by using “sudo rmdir AppleWWANSupport.kext”. Then install the latest drivers from Mer­lin http://www.novatelwireless.com/support/merlin-xu870-apple.html restart the machine and try again.

    You could check the inter­fer­ence the­ory for your­self. Get a copy of Par­al­lels < a href=“http://www.parallels.com/”>http://www.parallels.com/ the 30 day demo is free, install a copy of Win­dows, acquire the XU870 in Par­al­lels (it treats the card as a USB device it is simple) install the con­nec­tion soft­ware and con­nect via Win­dows, I have done this a few times without any problems.

    If you can con­nect via Win­dows, then it is a soft­ware issue not a hard­ware issue like GPRS inter­fer­ence with Mac­Book Pro. Given my exper­i­ence with the XU870 and MBP, I would be bet­ting on soft­ware issue.

  7. Spiros Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 4:48 pm

    Thank you I will try it, but as I remem­ber one of the first thing I did when I took the card was to install the drivers from nova­tel without res­ults… I keep you informed thank you

  8. Spiros Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    I used “sudo rmdir AppleWWANSupport.kext” and I get “no such file or dir­ect­ory” so the job is done.

    I tried 2 dif­fer­ent soft­wares already: All Ver­sions of “Voda­fone Mobile Con­nect” provided by Voda­fone, and
    “Launch2Net” provided by Novamedia.

    Sys­tem freezes no mat­ter the Ver­sion, the envir­o­ment, the time etc…)

  9. Spiros Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 8:22 pm

    …Installed drivers from Nova­tel site, used Voda­fone Mobile Con­nect Soft­ware Latest Ver­sion Sys­tem Freezes :-(

  10. nick Says:
    September 3rd, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    Spiros, I don’t use any 3rd party soft­ware to con­nect. The method I use is detailed here http://www.novatelwireless.com/support/merlin-xu870-apple.html.

    I don’t know what Voda­fone sup­port is like. With 3 I call their sup­port line, tell then I am hav­ing I hav­ing prob­lems with with XU870 mobile broad­band card and Apple Mac­Book Pro, I get redir­ec­ted to the mobile broad­band team straight away. I then men­tion Apple Mac­Book Pro and I get redir­ec­ted straight to the Mac expert. From there I always get good sup­port from there.

  11. Mike Says:
    October 28th, 2007 at 11:41 am

    Leo­pard has broken using the 3 net­work (again).

    Any­one with any suggestions?

  12. Nick Says:
    October 28th, 2007 at 1:35 pm

    Mike, I have not upgraded to Leo­pard just yet so I have yet to encounter that prob­lem. Best guess is to do a search for wwan and deleted then (though to be on the safe side back them up first).

    At the com­mand line in ter­minal type:
    sudo find . –name *WWAN* –print
    this should list all the files and dir­ect­or­ies with WWAN in their name, then delete those files (after back­ing them up). Install the latest drivers from Nova­tel and restart you Mac­Book Pro. Let me know if this works.

  13. Pieter Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 3:52 am

    I upgraded also to Leo­pard (10.5) and it breaks also my XU870 :-(
    There are LOTS of files match­ing the *WWAN*… I’m a bit affraid to remove them (will my machine boot after this?)
    Any­way, I’m very inter­ested in someone who was able to fix the thing !

  14. Pieter Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 4:08 am

    I gave it a try: I did delete the following:

    /Library/Modem Scripts/WWAN
    /System/Library/CoreServices/Menu Extras/WWAN.menu
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANSupport.kext
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANSupport1.kext
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANSupport2.kext
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANVerizon.kext
    /System/Library/Extensions/IOSerialFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ AppleWWANVerizonKicker.kext

    Unfor­tu­nately… it didn’t solve a thing :-(

  15. Nick Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 7:35 am

    Thanks for try­ing that Pieter. It was look­ing like I needed to install Leo­pard on an external disk and have to exper­i­ment with which files to remove. How­ever, it looks like some­body has done the hard work already. http://groups.google.com/group/de.comp.sys.mac.misc/browse_thread/thread/2c159197f576d562/8b20ddacb9d1425b. You just need to trans­late the page from German.

  16. Nick Cowie » Leopard and Merlin XU870 Says:
    October 30th, 2007 at 8:53 pm

    […] I have yet to pur­chase my copy of Leo­pard, but from a couple of com­ments on one of my pre­vi­ous posts on the XU870 and Tiger upgrades. It appears that upgrad­ing to Leo­pard also breaks XU870 sup­port out­side the US for the unwary. […]

  17. Dan Says:
    January 1st, 2008 at 1:10 am

    I have a Mac­Book Pro. My Nova­tel EX 720 works fine in the Mac side. On the Win­dows side the Con­nec­tion Mgr does not recog­nize the card. The com­puter sees it just fine in the device mgr.

    Any idea on what I can do to fix this?

    Thanks

  18. Nick Says:
    January 2nd, 2008 at 1:25 pm

    Dan, I don’t know about the EX720 with the XU870, I just fire up Par­al­lels, acc­quire the XU870 as a USB device and use the Win­dows soft­ware that came with the XU870 to con­nect. It is that easy for me.

    Accord­ing to SlashGear Par­al­lels can not see the EX720. Without a EX720 to play with, I do not know, I may of been using a later ver­sion of Par­al­lels or there is a dif­fer­ence between the EX720 and XU870 or their Win­dows drivers that causes the problems.

  19. Sascha Says:
    January 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 am

    Hi Nick!

    Did you solve the firm­ware prob­lem some­how? Did the same (upgrade via par­al­lels) and broke the cards firmware.

    THanks
    Sascha

  20. Nick Says:
    January 3rd, 2008 at 9:35 am

    Hi Sascha

    No I did not get it fixed. I got my card replaced under war­ranty, just rang my mobile pro­vider (3 Aus­tralia) explained what happened (I was fol­low­ing instruc­tions from their web­site) and they replaced it.

    As long as you did not try to upgrade a second time under Paralells (I did so I deleted my ori­ginal set­tings). You can retrieve your ori­ginal set­tings from C:\Program Files\Novatel Wireless\Firmware Cache\ the file name should be some­thing like L7070207000350_001.cache — 0 with the size about 100Kb and the file will also have hid­den attrib­ute. So get this file and save it some­where safe.

    If my logic is right, fire up win­dows under boot­camp or on a PC, start the upgrade again. Once the firm­ware set­ting are stored on the PC in C:\Program Files\Novatel Wireless\Firmware Cache\ replace it with the one you retrieved from your first attempt and con­tinue the pro­cess and hope­fully things should work.

  21. David Says:
    June 6th, 2009 at 7:57 am

    Hi,

    I have exactly the same freez­ing prob­lem with my Mer­lin XU870 that was from T-MOBILE in UK.

    I have upgraded the firm­ware via VMARE FUSION 2.0.4 and accord­ing to instruc­tions on http://engel.allfirmwares.com/ (replaced the set­tings cache file dur­ing first upgrade then was able to flash the newer firm­ware from that page).

    The res­ult = every time I con­nect my XU870 my Mac­Book Pro crashes instantly after status LED flashes a couple of times in purple (EDGE). I’ve read GPRS/EDGE use 2Wat and that causes the prob­lem (some people say it’s rub­bish). After 5 hours of look­ing for inform­a­tion found noth­ing ;/
    Will try my card in a big­ger town where 3G is avail­able. Also, will lock mobil soft­ware to use UMTS only when try­ing from VMWARE (it didn’t crash when it was switched on but have only EDGE here). So it makes sense that 2W and mother­board hav­ing prob­lem with it.

    My MBP details:
    Mac OSX Leo­pard 10.5.7
    Mac­Book Pro 15″
    Mac­Book Pro2,2
    Intel Core 2 Duo
    Pro­cessors: 1
    Cores: 2
    L2 cache: 4MB
    Mem: 3GB
    Bus spd: 667
    Boot Rom MBP22.00A5.B07

  22. David Says:
    June 8th, 2009 at 12:58 am

    am selling this p**** of c*** — not worth my time spent on it — will buy a work­ing card.

    Good luck to those want­ing to get it work­ing on MBP.

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