hacking sierra wireless aircard 555 on suse 10

Since there's a lot of changes from pcmcia-cs to pcmciautils, pcmcia operation suppose to be easier because it now work with hotplug.
That mean when the card got inserted to the laptop, linux will just recognize it in a zap.
But that's just doesn't work for sierra aircard 555 while you using suse 10.
To make your aircard 555 work on suse 10, you need to fiddle around a bit with linux kernel.
Owww and you will need you kernel source because we need to recompile the serial_cs module!
First, make sure when you insert the card to pcmcia slot and the pcmciautils recognize your card
type "pccardctl info" then you should get following output on your shell

ong@saintlucifer:~> pccardctl status
Socket 0:
command 'status' not yet handled by pccardctl
o3ng@saintlucifer:~> pccardctl info
PRODID_1="Sierra Wireless"
PRODID_2="AirCard 555"
PRODID_3="A555"
PRODID_4="Rev 1"
MANFID=0192,a555
FUNCID=6

Then you need to get Aircard cis file from http://www.sierrawireless.com/resources/faq/PC_Card/AirCard555/Aircard_Linux.tar
then run following command

tar xvf Aircard_Linux.tar
cd Aircard_Linux/
cp SW_555_SER.cis /lib/firmware

Then go to your kernel source and find serial_cs.c
Search for following line,

PCMCIA_DEVICE_CIS_MANF_CARD(0x0192, 0xa555, "SW_555_SER.cis"), /* Sierra Aircard 555 CDMA 1xrtt Modem -- pre update */

then we recompile the kernel, after the kernel compilation is finish copy serial_cs.ko that is in drivers/serial and copy it to kernel/drivers/serial (replace the serial_cs.ko if exist) in your kernel module directory than reboot your computer
(if the line above exist on your serial_cs.c on your kernel source, you won't need to recompile the module you can just reboot your computer)
before you reboot your computer do "pccardctl eject" and unplug the aircard from pcmcia slot

After reboot, probe the serial_cs module then the device should be in /dev/ttyS0
Use the minicom to verify it, this what i got on my minicom

at!status
Current band: Cellular Sleep
Current channel: 384
Pilot acquired
Modem has registered

OK


Hope that help, happy hacking ;)