Awesome… so… forgive my ignorance here, but we’re talking about a driver for the USB wireless modem that Telstra are selling for the NextG network yeah?
Telstra have been completely hopeless at helping me out with getting internet access – they literallysaid we can’t help you cos you’re on a mac. No discussion about when or how i might be able to get internet access for my ibook…
but i’ll still have to buy it from Telstra and get my account with them?
Sorry for my ignorance here… I’ve spent heaps of time trying to sort this out… I just want internet access and without cable or a landline, it’s been a complete bitch.
Now all i need to do is find someone that can tell me how to hook my nintendo wii up to the net via the laptop!
David …… that’s brilliant timing ! The courier just this minute – 3.20pm – dropped off the package from Telstra with the little blue wonder in it!
Can’t wait to fire it up and check out the performance.
That’s exactly what we are talking about. You will need to buy the modem from Telstra, and go onto one of their plans. We will provide the software to allow that modem to connect through a Mac.
Great news! I’m having so much trouble connecting using the Windws side of the Macbook – it will be good to get back to Mac, and (hopefully) have less hassles!
Unfortunately it looks like we won’t get the beta today.
Development continues, we’ve seen another Alpha version today, but we don’t yet have a Beta!
Sorry folks, but realistically now the odds are we won’t get them until at least the weekend, and if someone isn’t around for final testing / release they won’t be available until early next week (hopefully monday), tomorrow being a public holiday and all.
If I see something come through tomorrow I’ll be sure to put it up, but I don’t like the odds of that!
same as Troy. It is a matter of whether I return this to Telstra. For although it works on the IBM side – that frankly is not what I want to use it for. I will make a decision on Wednesday.
I’m with Peter… Telstra sold me one of these pretty little blue things after they ‘mis-answered’ my direct question about mac support.. and now I have until the end of the week to keep it or waste the $300 bucks on pretty little blue thing (I guess I could make a necklace from it). Some indication of an eta would be nice.
sigh… I recognize (as well all do, no doubt), that software development is wicked and unpredictable, so dates slip. However, it’s not like someone forced Maxon to say that the betas would be available last Thursday (I hope!). Now that they did so, I do think it would only be polite if one of the folks covering for David while he is on vacation could drop us a note… even if it’s just to say “it’ll be another week” or whatever…
well I thought I was pretty clever being the first on the block to get my shiny new blue USB modem and plan from Telstra shop very early in Jan. How disappointing to find I can’t use it on my Macbook without the driver.
BTW has anyone noticed the Next G ad on TV the guy is using a Macbook computer? False advertising!!
even a quick update on how long the delay will be would be very much appreciated. There are lots of us waiting to roll out stuff for our business and a timeline would help.
Based on maxon’s statement of an expected beta last week I made plans and setup some dealines. (my fault entirely as it was based on a beta but hey a few words from Maxon would help at this point)
I’ve got one more day to decide whether to send this back to Telstra… um… a little help please? I spoke to someone there on the phone monday morning who said that he would ‘probably’ know by the end of the day.. even took my phone number to call me back… I’d be happy with a one-letter message here though.
How about choosing from one of the following options: (a) it works and will be ready within x days; (b) there were problems… it will work but look for a delay of approx x days; (c) frig off.. we don’t want your dirty mac business.
I have had my BP USB NextG modem working under WinXP installed in Parallels 2.5 my MBP17″ since 22Dec06. I got it running under WinXP on my BootCamp partition early in January as well. It runs very well. The signal is much better than for EVDO in those rare places that had EVDO (Inverell didn’t).
I live in Inverell and my office is half underground. My CDMA phone signal is 1 bar sometimes none. the Next G BigPond USB modem runs with 3 of the 5 bars.
Obvousdly I would prefer a Mac OSX driver. Perhaps tomorrow!
C’mon Maxon, please tell us when it will be available.
1 day?
1 week?
It’s pretty poor as we have forked out cash and yet cannot use the turbo modems
Give us some communication either way
Wilf
If the folks at Maxon only realized how faithful a mac-user can be to a company that treats them well… and how resentful – to the point of boycotting – we can be when a company does not treat us well… maybe then they’d spend 25 seconds posting a response on the company website.
As it is… it is friday afternoon and my pretty little blue thing is wrapped and about to be shipped back. I’m not gambling $300 with NO information regarding the feasibility of actually using the device in the future. Hopefully amnet or iinet will come up with their own solution… and hopefully it will not involve a Maxon product.
Simon, Russell, Peter, Wilf, and the rest of you… good luck. I hope you get what you need.
Spoke with Maxon today on the phone. Drivers/Software NOT AVAILABLE for another week at least.
Dave – smart move dude.
Maxon – so disappointing. Why won’t you talk to us?
My business trip over the next 4 days is now in the shitter – as I had planned it all around being on email the entire time. Some notification would have been nice
This is very disappointing as I spoke to the guys from Maxon last Monday (after Telstra managed to get me through) and they told me it would be Friday (as in yesterday).
We are all being patient but there comes a point when I wish someone from Telstra would take ownership of this matter. If they are going to package their products as being OSX 10.4+ ready why are they not? And with no response from a company that isn’t really cricket now is it.
Dave – not only are Mac users loyal we also generally spend a little more to get decent hardware.
I wonder whether it’s the actuall drivers holding it up or if it’s Telstra holding it up doing their front end manager for the drivers ?
I read somewhere that Maxon do the drivers but Telstra / Bigpond do the branded front end
another week to wait oh well
All in all though I must admit i would much rather companies like Telstra/Bigpond roll out products branded with Mac support and we get stuffed about for a few weeks, than as it used to be not too long ago that if you had a Mac you would be lucky to get any driver or support at all.
PS .. it wont be too long before we Mac users become first class citizens.
I had to do some Vista installs last week and MY GOD is that the best they can do after 5 years. Don’t get me wrong it’s better than XP BUT after using OSX , Vista is like a really really bad copy of it and still crashed and has 1/2 of the same old problems as XP.
Come on Leopard. 10.4 already makes Vista look like a very poor last. Leopard will leave it in the dust and make it look like Win 95
I believe it is the drivers from Maxon that is holding everything up. As I mentioned before 2 weeks ago I spoke to the Dev Support guys at Maxon and they said that there is a team of 2 guys developing this driver in the USA.
The problem is that they are unable to test their mods on the US networks. Instead the drivers are sent for testing back in Australia. Obviously not an ideal situation. Given all the set backs I don’t know why Maxon don’t put 1 of the tech’s on a plane to Oz so they can get a good run at it.
Has there been any further progress? I think a lot of people are anxiously awaiting these beta drivers – having to run my BP3-USB through Windows (through Parallels) is a horrible process
this is a bit like global warming – a lot of people are talking about it but nobody seems to be really doing anything about it! Bit silly really. How hard can it be to write a script for a driver for Gawdzake???!! Not rocket science is it? I’ve had my modem for a month now and I can’t use it – ridiculous.
Is anyone from Maxon even slightly interested in providing an update? We have all paid substantial sums of money for hardware that the packaging says in Mac OSX 10.4+ compliant.
Atleast have the decency to provide an update as that is called customer service.
Well I have emailed twice and haven’t got anything. I will call this afternoon – I was hoping to have this driver by tomorrow so I can use the ‘net while on business in Melbourne.
Hi, this whole driver debacle is a joke from a consumer point of view and it sounds like nothing has changed. A relative of mine recently purchased a GlobeTrotter GT Max nextG card to upgrade an EVDO card for his powerbook, was assured by telstra that it would work as the packaging also states it works with Mac OS X 10.4.x. Bottom line was that, there was no mac software on the disk, telstra or bigpond have never run them on mac and don’t support it at all.
As far as I’m concerned this is false advertising and it seems the same with the next g minimax as the Telstra shops are selling them saying they will work on mac. I work in the IT industry so this is nothing new to me but how do they expect off the street consumers that are willing to adopt their technology to understand it. It’s all just a tangled pack of lies holding pack a good product. My 0.02c worth.
Hi all.. it is Dave here again… I’m back… turns out a freind convinced me to not return my pretty blue thing and instead convinced me to finally try bootcamp. I feel ’so’ dirty when my shiny new macbook makes that windows startup sound…
Anyways… since Maxon doesn’t want to update you all.. I figured I would since I probably know more about than you all do as a result of yesterday’s events.
If you recall a long-ago previous post, I said that I had spoken to someone there who took my number. Well yesterday I finally got a call back and I have been sent the new drivers (a unix executable script and a .pkg file)… which apparantly work. However… they are for some orange version of the modem (from telstra??), not the blue one which we all got from bigpond. Support for the blue one, I’m told, will have to come from bigpond themselves… here’s a quote:
“Sorry, [..] this will only work for you, if you are a Telstra client and not Bigpond. There are differences in the firmwares of the two which means that they require different drivers, Bigpond will get copies of our drivers which they will use to produce their software. In order to get such software you will need to contact them.”
Personally, I thought Telstra WAS Bigpond… since if you so much as mention internet to a telstra rep they immediately transfer you to bigpond. Alas… if any of you are ‘telstra’ clients then you can go internet crazy now. If any of you ‘are’ in this category, would you be kind enough to post explaining how you managed this feat? For the rest of us… we’ve apparantly been barking up the wrong tree.
Thanks for providing us with an update – it’s about time someone did. What’s even worse is that Bigpond have been telling people to follow the issue up with Maxon.
I’d be surprised (but I can’t qualify this) if the firmware were so different that the supplied drivers couldn’t make the blue BP3-USB work.
Can you send me a copy? I’ll fiddle with them tonight and see what I can come up with.
Beside that, I’ll stick it up Bigpond again this arvo and see what happens. I hope we don’t have to wait for final release drivers – Bigpond ought get to releasing some ‘beta’ drivers, or they’re going to have an army of angry Mac users if they don’t already.
For those of us that have the Telstra (Orange Minimax), where can we get the drivers ? Are you allowed to pass these on ? If so can you please send me a copy jonesy@ssute.com .
I’m not sure what kind of copyright trouble I might get myself into if I start to distribute this myself… so instead what I’ll do is give you the contact info for the person I got them from (I’ll send emails with that info so as not to p*ss anyone off too much).
Chris: thanks for volunteering to contact Bigpond… the last time I tried I got disconnected on hold THREE times before getting through to someone who knew nothing an hour later. If I had to go through that again I’d end up on top of the bell tower with a siper rifle. If you ‘do’ find something else or (heaven forbid) actually make the drivers work… please share..
Jonesy: How’d you get an orange one? What ‘plan’ are you on? What did I miss?
I went through to tech support and I asked Bigpond but they really didn’t know very much. All the chap could say was that they are “coming soon” – he couldn’t clarify anything about whether Maxon on Bigpond were responsible for any delay.
I’m hopeful that if the chap at Maxon is happy to share the beta Telstra TurboModem (ie, orange) drivers, they can’t be too far away from the blue BigPond modems and a quick bit of fiddling might get them working, even if it’s not in a pretty state. Native support without a pretty solution is far better than running it under Parallels.
From what I’ve heard it was that Maxon though Apple was going to produce the drivers. It was only after the device came out that it was found that Apple hadn’t. The packaging and the sales staff were all told that yes Bigpond does have Mac support when the mistake was found.
The only good thing about the whole situation is that now with Vista coming out Bigpond is for now not supporting that either. It just brings a tear to my eye all those people who rushed in and bought Vista and find that so many things don’t work and it also crashes. Makes me wan’t to install linux on my pc’s and buy a new mac
Well the beta drivers for the Telstra Turbo Modem (Orange stick) don’t wrk for the Blue one – Bigpond. I assume this is beceause Telstra- doesnt require authentication to open a network connection, whereas Bigpond does.
It gets MacOSX to recognise the device – it shows up as a wireless network adaptor – but I can’t find any way to get the Mac to provide the BP login details to get it working.
I really hope someone has the good sense to resolve this problem soon or it could be costly.
Hey, I work at a Telstra shop in Moree. I also thought that the modems worked with Mac and I told a customer yesterday that it would (the Telstra orange one) because it has Mac install instructions on the inside of the case. Unfortunately there were no drivers on the cd. So yesterday I got onto this website like the instructions told me too to get the drivers but nothing here either. I rang Maxon support and they said that the drivers would be released on the site tomorrow (which is today).
Could I get the turbo modem drivers sent to my email address or the phone number of the guy I can talk to to have them sent to me. I have this ladies mac book in my shop and said I would install the modem for her today. My email address: moreetls@bigpond.net.au
Would be much appreciated. By the way, if you want to know more about the Turbo modem (orange telstra one) you can ring the Moree store and talk to me on 0267527777.
Reply – moreetls@bigpond.net.au\r\n\r\nWould be much appreciated. By the way, if you want to know more about the Turbo modem (orange telstra one) you can ring the Moree store and talk to me on 0267527777.’); return false;”>Quote
Hey guys, I just got the beta drivers for the turbo modem. I just rang maxon support on 0797072000 and they emailed the drivers to me. I don’t thing they’re putting them up on the site yet though.
Update: I’ve had the drivers for the Orange USB modem email to me today and I’ve tried them on a macbook and a macbook pro and they are not working as per the installation instructions. The modem port is added but no adapter created to use the port. Please pass on the secret to get these drivers working if anyone is successfull.
So… I have the blue (bigpond stick) and the beta drivers, and a wonderful utility called Launch2Net. Installing the beta drivers gives me a new network port. In theory, I should be able to use Launch2Net to connect to bigpond, rather than the standard bigpond software (which doesn’t ’see’ the stick even with the beta drivers installed).
But, there’s a bit missing; when the beta drivers are installed, a network port is set up but *not* a modem port, so the launch2net software won’t talk to the stick.
Anyone got any ideas how to bridge the gap (or alternate approaches?)… forums on Whirlpool certainly indicate that Launch2Net would do the job, if only we could make it see the blue stick!
If I get anything working beyond this, I’ll post back here, but could sure use some help at this point!
cheers
Simon
Reply – simon@kaplan.id.au\r\n\r\nIf I get anything working beyond this, I\’ll post back here, but could sure use some help at this point!\r\n\r\n\r\ncheers\r\nSimon’); return false;”>Quote
Wonderful, can’t wait… keep up the good work guys!
Good work!
Awesome… so… forgive my ignorance here, but we’re talking about a driver for the USB wireless modem that Telstra are selling for the NextG network yeah?
Telstra have been completely hopeless at helping me out with getting internet access – they literallysaid we can’t help you cos you’re on a mac. No discussion about when or how i might be able to get internet access for my ibook…
but i’ll still have to buy it from Telstra and get my account with them?
Sorry for my ignorance here… I’ve spent heaps of time trying to sort this out… I just want internet access and without cable or a landline, it’s been a complete bitch.
Now all i need to do is find someone that can tell me how to hook my nintendo wii up to the net via the laptop!
David …… that’s brilliant timing ! The courier just this minute – 3.20pm – dropped off the package from Telstra with the little blue wonder in it!
Can’t wait to fire it up and check out the performance.
Brian Cassey
David, what a delight !!! My little blue usb arrived by courier today. …. It will be just like Xmas
Well done Maxon !!!
great .. have my USB modem sitting next to my MacBook pro waiting to give it a test.
Works fine using parallels and Win Xp
Nathan,
That’s exactly what we are talking about. You will need to buy the modem from Telstra, and go onto one of their plans. We will provide the software to allow that modem to connect through a Mac.
Where exactly will the driver be available? I am very keen. I too can run it on parallel and Boot camp – but just not that useful there.
Peter,
I’ll put a post up on here once I have them, as well as on the main site.
Great news! I’m having so much trouble connecting using the Windws side of the Macbook – it will be good to get back to Mac, and (hopefully) have less hassles!
I’m watching but my eye is getting a bit tired …. oh well no beta driver yet
Unfortunately it looks like we won’t get the beta today.
Development continues, we’ve seen another Alpha version today, but we don’t yet have a Beta!
Sorry folks, but realistically now the odds are we won’t get them until at least the weekend, and if someone isn’t around for final testing / release they won’t be available until early next week (hopefully monday), tomorrow being a public holiday and all.
If I see something come through tomorrow I’ll be sure to put it up, but I don’t like the odds of that!
Quick Question about the drivers and interface> Noticed this elsewhere on your site “Telstra Turbo Modem (orange) vs. Bigpond USB card (blue)”
I did not even realise there were 2 diff types of the same usb modem.
I went and got the “Blue” BigPond usb modem (or card as they call it) will the beta drivers your about to release work on my Blue USB modem ?
thanks
Hi,
Just wondering if someone can give me a realistic eta for the Mac OS X beta drivers?
Thanks.
Hi,
same as Troy. It is a matter of whether I return this to Telstra. For although it works on the IBM side – that frankly is not what I want to use it for. I will make a decision on Wednesday.
Thanks.
I’m with Peter… Telstra sold me one of these pretty little blue things after they ‘mis-answered’ my direct question about mac support.. and now I have until the end of the week to keep it or waste the $300 bucks on pretty little blue thing (I guess I could make a necklace from it). Some indication of an eta would be nice.
thanks.
d
I think the room is empty .. I hear an echo
Russell – I actually did laugh out load.
Seriously it would be nice to know some expected time – an update or something. Obviously there are a few of us who need to make decision on this.
sigh… I recognize (as well all do, no doubt), that software development is wicked and unpredictable, so dates slip. However, it’s not like someone forced Maxon to say that the betas would be available last Thursday (I hope!). Now that they did so, I do think it would only be polite if one of the folks covering for David while he is on vacation could drop us a note… even if it’s just to say “it’ll be another week” or whatever…
Thanks!
cheers
Simon
well I thought I was pretty clever being the first on the block to get my shiny new blue USB modem and plan from Telstra shop very early in Jan. How disappointing to find I can’t use it on my Macbook without the driver.
BTW has anyone noticed the Next G ad on TV the guy is using a Macbook computer? False advertising!!
ahhh but he could be running parallels !!
but hey I agree … very frustrating
even a quick update on how long the delay will be would be very much appreciated. There are lots of us waiting to roll out stuff for our business and a timeline would help.
Based on maxon’s statement of an expected beta last week I made plans and setup some dealines. (my fault entirely as it was based on a beta but hey a few words from Maxon would help at this point)
I’ve got one more day to decide whether to send this back to Telstra… um… a little help please? I spoke to someone there on the phone monday morning who said that he would ‘probably’ know by the end of the day.. even took my phone number to call me back… I’d be happy with a one-letter message here though.
How about choosing from one of the following options: (a) it works and will be ready within x days; (b) there were problems… it will work but look for a delay of approx x days; (c) frig off.. we don’t want your dirty mac business.
thanks
d
Do you think David is the only one from Maxon with a password to get onto the forum? Or he has gone on holiday – and everyone else went too?
I’ve got it … 2 theories
1) Vista has been released and everyone is still stunned and dazed at what a great new operating system it is ……
2) Maybe MAXON installed vista and have yet to rework out how to boot it so they can’t reply to the forum.
Sorry but I can’t help myself .. if we don’t have drivers a bit of levity helps .. stops me crying that my Next G modem does not work yet
I have had my BP USB NextG modem working under WinXP installed in Parallels 2.5 my MBP17″ since 22Dec06. I got it running under WinXP on my BootCamp partition early in January as well. It runs very well. The signal is much better than for EVDO in those rare places that had EVDO (Inverell didn’t).
I live in Inverell and my office is half underground. My CDMA phone signal is 1 bar sometimes none. the Next G BigPond USB modem runs with 3 of the 5 bars.
Obvousdly I would prefer a Mac OSX driver. Perhaps tomorrow!
David J
C’mon Maxon, please tell us when it will be available.
1 day?
1 week?
It’s pretty poor as we have forked out cash and yet cannot use the turbo modems
Give us some communication either way
Wilf
If the folks at Maxon only realized how faithful a mac-user can be to a company that treats them well… and how resentful – to the point of boycotting – we can be when a company does not treat us well… maybe then they’d spend 25 seconds posting a response on the company website.
As it is… it is friday afternoon and my pretty little blue thing is wrapped and about to be shipped back. I’m not gambling $300 with NO information regarding the feasibility of actually using the device in the future. Hopefully amnet or iinet will come up with their own solution… and hopefully it will not involve a Maxon product.
Simon, Russell, Peter, Wilf, and the rest of you… good luck. I hope you get what you need.
bye y’all.
Spoke with Maxon today on the phone. Drivers/Software NOT AVAILABLE for another week at least.
Dave – smart move dude.
Maxon – so disappointing. Why won’t you talk to us?
My business trip over the next 4 days is now in the shitter – as I had planned it all around being on email the entire time. Some notification would have been nice
Wilf
This is very disappointing as I spoke to the guys from Maxon last Monday (after Telstra managed to get me through) and they told me it would be Friday (as in yesterday).
We are all being patient but there comes a point when I wish someone from Telstra would take ownership of this matter. If they are going to package their products as being OSX 10.4+ ready why are they not? And with no response from a company that isn’t really cricket now is it.
Dave – not only are Mac users loyal we also generally spend a little more to get decent hardware.
Hoping to get some word soon.
I wonder whether it’s the actuall drivers holding it up or if it’s Telstra holding it up doing their front end manager for the drivers ?
I read somewhere that Maxon do the drivers but Telstra / Bigpond do the branded front end
another week to wait oh well
All in all though I must admit i would much rather companies like Telstra/Bigpond roll out products branded with Mac support and we get stuffed about for a few weeks, than as it used to be not too long ago that if you had a Mac you would be lucky to get any driver or support at all.
PS .. it wont be too long before we Mac users become first class citizens.
I had to do some Vista installs last week and MY GOD is that the best they can do after 5 years. Don’t get me wrong it’s better than XP BUT after using OSX , Vista is like a really really bad copy of it and still crashed and has 1/2 of the same old problems as XP.
Come on Leopard. 10.4 already makes Vista look like a very poor last. Leopard will leave it in the dust and make it look like Win 95
I believe it is the drivers from Maxon that is holding everything up. As I mentioned before 2 weeks ago I spoke to the Dev Support guys at Maxon and they said that there is a team of 2 guys developing this driver in the USA.
The problem is that they are unable to test their mods on the US networks. Instead the drivers are sent for testing back in Australia. Obviously not an ideal situation. Given all the set backs I don’t know why Maxon don’t put 1 of the tech’s on a plane to Oz so they can get a good run at it.
Has there been any further progress? I think a lot of people are anxiously awaiting these beta drivers – having to run my BP3-USB through Windows (through Parallels) is a horrible process
this is a bit like global warming – a lot of people are talking about it but nobody seems to be really doing anything about it! Bit silly really. How hard can it be to write a script for a driver for Gawdzake???!! Not rocket science is it? I’ve had my modem for a month now and I can’t use it – ridiculous.
Is anyone from Maxon even slightly interested in providing an update? We have all paid substantial sums of money for hardware that the packaging says in Mac OSX 10.4+ compliant.
Atleast have the decency to provide an update as that is called customer service.
Well I have emailed twice and haven’t got anything. I will call this afternoon – I was hoping to have this driver by tomorrow so I can use the ‘net while on business in Melbourne.
Hi, this whole driver debacle is a joke from a consumer point of view and it sounds like nothing has changed. A relative of mine recently purchased a GlobeTrotter GT Max nextG card to upgrade an EVDO card for his powerbook, was assured by telstra that it would work as the packaging also states it works with Mac OS X 10.4.x. Bottom line was that, there was no mac software on the disk, telstra or bigpond have never run them on mac and don’t support it at all.
As far as I’m concerned this is false advertising and it seems the same with the next g minimax as the Telstra shops are selling them saying they will work on mac. I work in the IT industry so this is nothing new to me but how do they expect off the street consumers that are willing to adopt their technology to understand it. It’s all just a tangled pack of lies holding pack a good product. My 0.02c worth.
Hi all.. it is Dave here again… I’m back… turns out a freind convinced me to not return my pretty blue thing and instead convinced me to finally try bootcamp. I feel ’so’ dirty when my shiny new macbook makes that windows startup sound…
Anyways… since Maxon doesn’t want to update you all.. I figured I would since I probably know more about than you all do as a result of yesterday’s events.
If you recall a long-ago previous post, I said that I had spoken to someone there who took my number. Well yesterday I finally got a call back and I have been sent the new drivers (a unix executable script and a .pkg file)… which apparantly work. However… they are for some orange version of the modem (from telstra??), not the blue one which we all got from bigpond. Support for the blue one, I’m told, will have to come from bigpond themselves… here’s a quote:
“Sorry, [..] this will only work for you, if you are a Telstra client and not Bigpond. There are differences in the firmwares of the two which means that they require different drivers, Bigpond will get copies of our drivers which they will use to produce their software. In order to get such software you will need to contact them.”
Personally, I thought Telstra WAS Bigpond… since if you so much as mention internet to a telstra rep they immediately transfer you to bigpond. Alas… if any of you are ‘telstra’ clients then you can go internet crazy now. If any of you ‘are’ in this category, would you be kind enough to post explaining how you managed this feat? For the rest of us… we’ve apparantly been barking up the wrong tree.
Isn’t this fun??
d
Dave
Thanks for providing us with an update – it’s about time someone did. What’s even worse is that Bigpond have been telling people to follow the issue up with Maxon.
I’d be surprised (but I can’t qualify this) if the firmware were so different that the supplied drivers couldn’t make the blue BP3-USB work.
Can you send me a copy? I’ll fiddle with them tonight and see what I can come up with.
beta@rowland.id.au is me.
Beside that, I’ll stick it up Bigpond again this arvo and see what happens. I hope we don’t have to wait for final release drivers – Bigpond ought get to releasing some ‘beta’ drivers, or they’re going to have an army of angry Mac users if they don’t already.
For those of us that have the Telstra (Orange Minimax), where can we get the drivers ? Are you allowed to pass these on ? If so can you please send me a copy jonesy@ssute.com .
Thanks
Chris, Jonesy,
I’m not sure what kind of copyright trouble I might get myself into if I start to distribute this myself… so instead what I’ll do is give you the contact info for the person I got them from (I’ll send emails with that info so as not to p*ss anyone off too much).
Chris: thanks for volunteering to contact Bigpond… the last time I tried I got disconnected on hold THREE times before getting through to someone who knew nothing an hour later. If I had to go through that again I’d end up on top of the bell tower with a siper rifle. If you ‘do’ find something else or (heaven forbid) actually make the drivers work… please share..
Jonesy: How’d you get an orange one? What ‘plan’ are you on? What did I miss?
d
You have to be kidding
So the drivers will work with a Telstra Modem on Next G but not a Bigpond modem on next g , all made Maxon and all using Next G
argggggggggggggggggggggggggg
PS yes I too would like to try the other drivers anyway … just to see if in fact they might work
I went through to tech support and I asked Bigpond but they really didn’t know very much. All the chap could say was that they are “coming soon” – he couldn’t clarify anything about whether Maxon on Bigpond were responsible for any delay.
I’m hopeful that if the chap at Maxon is happy to share the beta Telstra TurboModem (ie, orange) drivers, they can’t be too far away from the blue BigPond modems and a quick bit of fiddling might get them working, even if it’s not in a pretty state. Native support without a pretty solution is far better than running it under Parallels.
From what I’ve heard it was that Maxon though Apple was going to produce the drivers. It was only after the device came out that it was found that Apple hadn’t. The packaging and the sales staff were all told that yes Bigpond does have Mac support when the mistake was found.
The only good thing about the whole situation is that now with Vista coming out Bigpond is for now not supporting that either. It just brings a tear to my eye all those people who rushed in and bought Vista and find that so many things don’t work and it also crashes. Makes me wan’t to install linux on my pc’s and buy a new mac
Well the beta drivers for the Telstra Turbo Modem (Orange stick) don’t wrk for the Blue one – Bigpond. I assume this is beceause Telstra- doesnt require authentication to open a network connection, whereas Bigpond does.
It gets MacOSX to recognise the device – it shows up as a wireless network adaptor – but I can’t find any way to get the Mac to provide the BP login details to get it working.
I really hope someone has the good sense to resolve this problem soon or it could be costly.
Hey, I work at a Telstra shop in Moree. I also thought that the modems worked with Mac and I told a customer yesterday that it would (the Telstra orange one) because it has Mac install instructions on the inside of the case. Unfortunately there were no drivers on the cd. So yesterday I got onto this website like the instructions told me too to get the drivers but nothing here either. I rang Maxon support and they said that the drivers would be released on the site tomorrow (which is today).
Could I get the turbo modem drivers sent to my email address or the phone number of the guy I can talk to to have them sent to me. I have this ladies mac book in my shop and said I would install the modem for her today. My email address: moreetls@bigpond.net.au
Would be much appreciated. By the way, if you want to know more about the Turbo modem (orange telstra one) you can ring the Moree store and talk to me on 0267527777.
Hey guys, I just got the beta drivers for the turbo modem. I just rang maxon support on 0797072000 and they emailed the drivers to me. I don’t thing they’re putting them up on the site yet though.
Update: I’ve had the drivers for the Orange USB modem email to me today and I’ve tried them on a macbook and a macbook pro and they are not working as per the installation instructions. The modem port is added but no adapter created to use the port. Please pass on the secret to get these drivers working if anyone is successfull.
Jonesy
Hi all.
So… I have the blue (bigpond stick) and the beta drivers, and a wonderful utility called Launch2Net. Installing the beta drivers gives me a new network port. In theory, I should be able to use Launch2Net to connect to bigpond, rather than the standard bigpond software (which doesn’t ’see’ the stick even with the beta drivers installed).
But, there’s a bit missing; when the beta drivers are installed, a network port is set up but *not* a modem port, so the launch2net software won’t talk to the stick.
Anyone got any ideas how to bridge the gap (or alternate approaches?)… forums on Whirlpool certainly indicate that Launch2Net would do the job, if only we could make it see the blue stick!
Any suggestions appreciated. Find me at simon@kaplan.id.au
If I get anything working beyond this, I’ll post back here, but could sure use some help at this point!
cheers
Simon