A Core Competence Product Evaluation
The Connection Kit: Cable, Software, and Documentation
The GSM Connection Kit consists of a connector cable, flash upgrade, Trio Wireless Communication Center software, and a GSM Reference Manual. The brief installation instructions included in the first chapter of the reference manual proved quite unnecessary. Just plug one end of the connector into the cell phone and the other end into the modem slot of the Xircom PC Card. Turn on the phone, launch Windows 95 Dial-Up Networking in the usual manner, and watch the call take place over wireless. During our trial, DUN connected the first time and on every attempt thereafter at 9600 bps, for both local and long distance calls.
Our Xircom modem was already running a recent firmware version with GSM support. For modems using an older firmware version (pre-1.38), the Xircom flash utility must be used to install a firmware upgrade - a simple process that takes less than 10 minutes.
The connector itself differs for each phone. In our case, the connector snapped onto the bottom of the Ericsson phone, with the same footprint as the travel charger. This of course meant that we couldn't charge the phone while using it to send data - not a big deal, since one primarily uses a mobile phone when far from both power outlet and phone jack.
At the other end of the cable, our unusual trial configuration presented a challenge. We use Xircom's MiniDock on our CEM56, a connector that slips into both the modem and LAN slots on the PC card to provide RJ-45 and RJ-11 jacks inside a single housing. We had to remove the MiniDock to insert the GSM connector. This is reasonable - you're unlikely to have LAN access when wanting to use your mobile phone to send data. But in our case, we trialed the GSM Connector Kit while attached to a show-floor LAN at an industry conference. This meant we hot-swapped cables when switching from LAN to wireless connectivity. We expected to give our PC card and/or laptop a big headache when doing this, but were pleasantly surprised that neither complained.
The GSM Connection Kit was so simple to use that it took us a few days to get around to installing the Trio Wireless Communication Center. We already had Microsoft Windows 95 HyperTerminal and Fax software on our laptop and assumed there was little to be gained by installing yet another datacomm/fax package. Boy, were we ever wrong!