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Connect the Sony Ericsson T68i With Your iBook


Make your Sony Ericsson T68i phone compatible with your iBook for connecting to the Internet.

Note: I have only tested this with my dual USB 500MHz iBook and I am running Mac OS 10.2.1, however, I can’t see how this wouldn’t work with another Mac.

I was trying to find a way to use my Sony Ericsson T68i phone as a modem to connect to my iBook via Bluetooth to dial back to my university’s modem pool. After almost giving up on the idea entirely, I decided to try out the application Mobile High Speed X and found out that it has a modem script that is named “MMHS Modem”. This modem script works pretty much flawlessly with the Sony Ericsson T68i and you do not even need the application Mobile High Speed X anymore in order to use the Sony Ericsson T68i phone as a regular modem.

Steps:

1. Get the script, MMHS Modem, from the application Mobile High Speed X.

2. Add this script to this directory: hard drive/library/modem scripts/

3. Connect your Bluetooth adaptor to your Mac and turn on the Bluetooth option on your Sony Ericsson T68i.

4. Open up system preferences and add the Bluetooth symbol to the menu bar (this makes accessing the following information easier).

5. From the menu bar, select the Bluetooth option and choose “search for phones…”

6. Pair your Mac to your Sony Ericsson T68i phone (make your phone discoverable)

7. A dialog box appears and will ask you if you want access to your address book and internet access, you have to at least choose the “internet access” option.

8. After this, reopen system preferences and choose Network, then (sometimes this option doesn’t show up immediately after your Bluetooth adaptor and phone are connected, you may have to quit system preferences and then re-launch it) in the “show” menu, choose: USB Bluetooth Modem Adaptor. Select the TCP/IP option and in the “configure” menu bar, choose “using PPP”. Choose the PPP tab and set that information up and then choose “PPP options”. Under PPP options, make sure that under the “Advanced Options” none of the options are checked. Click ok. Choose the Bluetooth Modem, in the Modem menu bar (if you have the modem icon in your menu bar), find the script MMHS Modem, check both of the next two options and then click “apply now”.

9. From the Bluetooth menu bar icon, choose the option “Open Internet Connect…” (or open the application itself in the Applications folder).

10. For the configuration option, choose “USB Bluetooth Modem Adaptor”

11. The information that you previously set up in the system preferences should now appear.

Now that you have your phone and your Mac paired, using the “internet connect” application (or if you have the internet connect icon in the menu bar) choose connect. Sometimes you may have to repeatedly try to connect, make sure your signal on your phone is at least 3 bars or higher, anything less and you may still get a connection, but I’ve had mixed results when the signal strength was this low. I recently had to go to Oklahoma, and this worked all throughout the airport, where I was able to obtain a strong signal on my cell phone and while I was at my dad’s home.

Some other things to note, I was only able to connect at a 9600 bps rate. Yes, that is correct, BPS, not KBPS, so this is a very slow connection, but if you need to quickly check your email or message someone or load up a non-intensive Web site and have no other viable means of connecting, i.e. a phone line or higher speed access, then this is a very good alternative. You may have a few minutes of waiting for the actual signing on and being authenticated, if you want to see the status, simply open up the Internet Connect application and watch the status.

Also make sure your phone still has an active call going, that is, the white screen is still showing and that it shows your are still on a call. I’ve noticed that if my phone loses the call, my Mac still thinks it is connected and the time connected still keeps counting. So I make sure my phone is still connected from time to time. However, when you are done, simply choose “disconnect” from the Internet Connect application and you Mac will terminate the connection and tell your phone to hang up.

What is also nice, if you have free long distance and roaming, you can simply dial to some modem pool number and connect and you will only be charged from your cellular service provider the number of minutes that your phone is making the call. At my university we are given 50 hours free a month of dial-up access. So I simply added my University’s number, user name and password, and I was able to connect at any time.

[For more on Bluetooth check out our Apple Bluetooth: A Primer and if a mobile phone provider in your area supports GPRS data access (which can go as fast at 40Mbps) check out our article GPRS, WAP Over Voicestream’s iStream Service Using Bluetooth]

By Jason O'Grady

Founded the PowerPage in 1995.