Using the Dell 5510 (aka Merlin XU870) WWAN adapter on Windows7

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Dell introduced this Mobile Broadband super dongle for business users, generally locked to one ISP (Vodafone in UK) It is a modern PCI Express Mini Card (34mm) unit although there is an adapter to fit the older PCMCIA card slot. It's a rebranded Merlin XU870.

They are supposed to run at 3.6meg with a 7.2meg firmware upgrade. Nobody seems to have found or successfully installed the 7.2 upgrade. (Help!)


These are sold by Dell UK with a Vodafone SIM for over £200, and I use Orange and I'm poor, so naturally I went to my favourite Ebay and picked up an UNLOCKED sample for £35 plus postage and it came with the Dell utility and driver disk. Other vendors supply the PCMCIA adapter and some sell the device LOCKED to Vodafone - Beware!

Being in an even smaller minority user group than the humble Huawei dongles supplied by UK ISPs there was a risk that my £35 was about to be flushed down the khasi. Getting support was going to be difficult.


Also these were issued by Dell when Vista was the latest OS, so would it work on Windows 7??

OK nothing ventured...etc, I loaded the Dell Utilities disk and ran the setup. There were only options for XP and for Vista so I chose Vista as most Win7 drivers are the same as Vista drivers.

The drivers were installed OK and so I plugged the 5510 into the PCI Express card slot. I got a white LED, then steady Red. No - that was not looking promising. No signal showed on the Dell connection manager program screen, which was also installed from the CD,

The connection manager also asked for the SIM's PIN number which I supplied to no avail, so I also tried to disable the PIN in case that was the problem. Still nothing.

Even worse news it asked me to activate the unit at Vodafone - oops locked??

I still suspected the SIM's PIN could be a problem so I reinstalled the SIM into the Huawei dongle and disabled the SIM PIN on there. I then reinstalled the SIM in the 5510 and rebooted.

Success! Blue flashing LED - always a good sign. So I then wend into Edit - Profile Manager, and created a new "profile" called "Orange" and entered the APN "consumerbroadband". There was nowhere to put in the dial *99# but it didn't need it. I now got the "Connect" button, (I may have rebooted which is always a good idea) I clicked on Connect button and I was online in seconds.



Pity it says "Vodafone" but I can live with that.

I also found a setting to switch off the "Activation reminder" to register with Vodafone (thank goodness, can't stand nagging programs).

Above shows the very simple profile setup for my "Orange" SIM. If you use another ISP then you need to Google for the APN details. Try www.filesaveas.co.uk

The 5510 also9 has a Manual Network Selection in the Edit/Configuration/Device Setting so you can see what ISPs in the area have 3g/UMTS. Usually with these manual selectors the strongest signal is shown first.

Pros:
More robust than a USB dongle.
Something different to show off!
Doesn't say Made In China (but it doesn't say where it is made!)

Cons:
Like connection managers the Dell program does not like SLEEP, HIBERNATE or Windows RESTART while open,so I took all the sleep/hibernate options out of the power options on the laptop. Close the Dell prog before a restart.
Can't find the 7.2 meg firmware upgrade, probably never will be one. The PMCMIA caddy provided for older laptops withoput PCI Express 34mm slot does not seem to have any drivers supplied.

Card specifications
External antenna Hirose MS 151connector

LED Colors
WHITE - card booting up
RED
Flashing: SIM card may be missing or inserted incorrectly. No Service
Solid: searching for GPRS/EDGE/UMTS/HSDPA or cellular service is currently not available.
GREEN GPRS
Flashing: GPRS service is available.
Solid: Connected to a network using GPRS.
VIOLET EDGE
Flashing: EDGE service is available.
Solid: Connected to a network using EDGE.
BLUE UMTS (3G)
Flashing: UMTS service is available.
Solid:* Connected to a network using UMTS.
YELLOW HSDPA (3G+)
Solid:* HSDPA service is available and is being used during the download.

Specifications
Technology/Bands
Tri band HSDPA/UMTS 850/1900/2100 MHz Quad band EDGE/GPRS 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
Data Speeds
3.6 Mbps peak download & 384 kbps Uplink Firmware upgrade for 7.2 Mbps peak download
Dimensions and Weight
112 mm x 34 mm x 5.0 mm 39 grams
Power consumption
Voltage 3.3 v (nominal)
Environmental
Operating temperature: 0oC to 55oC (32oF to 131oF) Storage temperature: 20oC to 65oC ( 4oF to 149oF) EMI Shielding
Operating Systems
Windows® 2000, XP & Vista Ready; Mac OS X 10.4 Connection Utility; Linux 2.6.16