Tether Nokia 6120 classic to OS X for data
Thursday, March 19th, 2009 at 07:41pm
When I am on-call for work I am required to remain within 30 minutes of a suitable internet connection. I am on-call this weekend, but I was planning to go for a ride along the Federation Trail.
That would be a problem, until a mobile broadband card was suggested and I remembered that we had data enabled on the on-call phone. So I could just take my PowerBook along with me.
The steps to get online through a Nokia 6120 classic on my 12″ Apple PowerBook (running OS X 10.5.6):
- Connect phone via an A to mini-B USB cable
- Phone should be in ‘PC Suite’ mode
- Open System Preferences > Network
- Two Nokia 6120 classic interfaces were detected. (each time I connected it is detected two more…)
- Select the first of the new interfaces
- Click Advanced
- Set vendor to Nokia, then the only model available was GPRS (GSM/3G)
- I entered Telstra.wap as the APN after looking at the existing phone settings, and left CID as 1.
- OK, Apply, and Connect
- Browse the intertubes
One caveat for these instructions is that data was already setup correctly on the phone, I did not have to do that.
It should also be possible to set this up over Bluetooth instead of USB, but I know this works and it’s not as if I will need it very often. I just need to remember three things: the phone, my powerbook and the USB cable.
The connection was surprisingly responsive and I have to say that the Telstra Next G network does appear to be quite nice (they sponsored StixCampNewstead last weekend with a connection), although I would never pay for it myself.
