Comment 241 for bug 868034

Marius B K wrote [QUOTE]You could just try it yourself using a live CD/USB stick. It would also ve interesting to know if a firmware upgrade would solve it.[/QUOTE] Yes, reasonable suggestion, and I do now have a working live 12.04.2-desktop-i386 USB stick. but sorry, no valid data-enabled simcard at the moment. I only use my E220 for 3 or 4 months of the year when I'm travelling, but of course during those months it becomes an essential lifeline.

In post #234 madbiologist asks [QUOTE] What firmware version does your E220 have?[/QUOTE]. In June 2012 I tried an upgrade to 11.117.10.03.99, the same as Aleksander is now using, and I also changed to Maxis Broadband as recommended in post #211 but neither of these made any improvement.

Although the upgrade to modemmanager 0.5 and subsequent patches to it have made it a little easier to get a successful connection, and this applies particularly in cases where I've left my E220 and simcard plugged in between subsequent Oneiric boots, I'm still left with a gut feeling or hunch that there's still something basic that changed between Natty and Oneiric that we've missed. I don't know what it is, but it appears to have carried forward and still be causing the same problems in Precise and Quantal. If I plug my E220 in to an already booted Oneiric, or if I use my E220 or my simcard in some other device between Oneiric boots, then I can expect trouble and I have to go through some usb_modeswitch commands and some unplugging and re-plugging sequence before I can connect. My post #115 refers.

This discrepancy in how successful attempts to connect are, depending on the recent past history of my E220 and simcard, takes me back to Joshua Dietze's reply in post #76 saying he doesn't think there can be anything retained in flash memory when the device is powered down. My evidence points to the contrary; past history of what I've been doing with the device between Ocelot boots *does* affect my results. This is leading me to speculate that Ocelot can't be re-initialising the E220 (or maybe even the simcard??) to exactly the same state as Natty was. Maybe I should point out that I sometimes use my E220 to connect on a Windows partition between Ocelot boots, and at other times I remove the simcard from my E220 and use it quite independently in a smartphone. On the other hand if I leave my E220 and simcard plugged in and depowered between Ocelot boots, I've a much better chance of a successful connection next time.

Could we perhaps take a closer look at the differences between the early part of the re-initialisation sequence that Maverick and Natty used to perform, compared to what Ocelot and subsequents are now doing?