In the pre-10.04 days it was possible to make a Gobi 200(0) modem work by installing gobi_loader and using it to load the firmware for the modem.

However, with the release of Ubuntu 10.04 (which sports a shiny 2.6.35 kernel) gobi_loader stopped working. Because gobi_loader (according to the homepage) does not support 2.6.32+ I stopped caring and used my Huwai stick instead.

Recently one my colleagues noted that after upgrading to 10.10 the wireless broadband connection seemed to be available from time to time – and having recently upgraded to Natty (11.04) I decided to see if I could get it to work again.

My system consists of:

  • Computer: HP Elitebook 2540p
  • Modem: Gobi 2000 with GPS
  • OS: Windows 7 and Ubuntu 11.04

The easiest way to get the modem working is to install HP Connection Manager in Windows to get the firmware and to make sure the modem works.

In Ubuntu, make sure the package gobi-loader

Now mount your Windows partition

and copy the needed files

That’s it; Reboot or reload udev and the modem should now be available in Network Manager.

(I might have missed something, this article is done from memory; once VirtualBox is working again I will verify the details – and test of this fix also works in 10.10)