After vacillating for a while (and waiting for it to become available), I finally purchased one of the Verizon / Novatel V640 Express Card EVDO adapters that everybody’s talking about for my MacBook Pro.

GearLog promised it would be easy — simply install drivers, plug in card — but they were wrong. Truth was that I didn’t even have to install the drivers. Mac OS X asked me if I wanted to “activate” the card when I plugged it in, then automatically went about configuring everything. Everything was done in short order, and moments after clicking connect I was online with wireless PPP and pinging the world. I don’t know how much of this can be credited to any configuration the folks at Booster Antenna (from whom I bought the card and service) may have done and how much is do to good plug-n-play in OS X. I can, however, say the price and service were excellent.

The 1xRTT speeds I’ve seen so far are fast enough to listen to 128K MP3 streams (though not without occasional hiccups), and the Speedtest reports consistently 125K or better downloads, with uploads that were never far behind and sometimes faster. In most of my use it actually feels faster than the numbers suggest, though scrolling in Google maps is noticeably slower than I’m used to (as are any other similarly graphic-heavy activities). I’ve not even tried surfing the likes of YouTube.

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Sometime ago I started work on figuring out how to get dial up networking (DUN) access via my Treo 650. Now I’m getting serious about mobile internet access and looking at this again.

The plan is that you should be able to make a Bluetooth connection between your laptop and the phone and then get piped onto the internet from the phone. Trevor Harmon wrote it up and has been following the issue as it relates to Mac OS X and Sprint Wireless service.

The problem is that Verizon has locked down the phone to make this difficult.

This MAKE blog post promises a how-to about getting “legal” DUN on the Treo 650 (what’s with the pix of oscilloscope traces and solar stoves?), but everything that follows is couched with warningss that we may toast our phones and draw the ire of our service provider.

With that said, Everything Treo has a forum post on using a Treo as external modem on Verizon that had some very specific instructions (copied below). TreoCentral has a similar Verizon 650 DUN Hack thread. And all of these point back to Shadowmite, who made the original hack. So, finally, this thread at shadowmite.com is definitely worth a look.

Does it work? I don’t know. I haven’t dared try yet.

Part A: Treo hack
1. Download Shadowmite’s hacked BtManager.prc to my Mac.
1(b)- because of funny settings from the web server, rename downloaded file from BtManager.verizon.prc.txt to BtManager.verizon.prc.
2. Soft reset the Treo 650, for a clean start.
3. Disable any programs that use the network connection, e.g. Chattermail.
4. Drag-and-drop BtManager.verizon.prc onto Bluetooth File Exchange.
4(b) send file to the Treo.
4(c) accept the file and agree to replace the existing app.
5. Open the new Bluetooth application on the Treo
5(b) Turn on Bluetooth DUN, accept the warnings.

Part B: Mac Setup
1. Open Bluetooth preference pane.
1(b) in Devices pane, delete the existing connection to the Treo.
2.Click ‘Set up new device…’
2(b) Choose ‘mobile phone’
2(c) Select the Treo
2(d) Enter the pairing password
2(e) Select Access The Internet service.
2(f) Enter the network settings:

Username: 2015551212@vzw3g.com, where the digits are my cellular number
Password: vzw
Phone Number: #777
Modem Script: 1_VZW_Generic_1X_ON_230400 (you can find that here)

3. Set up network port: Click on ‘Sharing’ tab
[ this step may not be necesssary for other people ]
3(b) Click ‘Add Serial Port Service’
3(c) Rename to ‘BluetoothDUN’ or the like
3(d) Set Type: Modem, and turn on ‘Show in Network Preferences’

4. Network Preferences
4(a) Open Network preference pane
4(b) Click to configure BluetoothDUN
4(c) Under PPP, click PPP Options…
4(d) Turn ON PPP echo packets, and OFF TCP/IP header compression

Part C: Attempt to Dial
1. Open Internet Connect
1(b) Select BluetoothDUN
1(c) Click ‘Connect’

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