Dell 5530 WWAN KM266 PCIe Mini Card - 7.2Mbps?

Hi2all,

just received a Dell 5530 WWAN Mobile Broadband HSDPA KM266 PCIe mini-card which I bought from a vendor on ebay today

Owning an XPS M1330, it took a little trial & error finding compatible drivers and the appropriate SW, but I managed it by feeding Dell's website with various Notebook models in order to get to said drivers & SW.

The SW (Ericsson) came from the Dell Mini 9 section (because the ebay vendor told me that's where he got the card in the first place):

Title : Communications: Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mini-Card Application
Version : A00
OEM Name : Dell
OEM Ver : 5.2.1045.43
Computers : Inspiron - 910, 1210
Created : Thu Jan 15 04:28:01 CST 2009

I used Dell's Studio XPS 1340 to get the drivers & I installed these:

Title : Communications: Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mini-Card Driver
Version : A06
OEM Name : Dell
OEM Ver : 1.0.11.13
Computers : Inspiron - 910, 1210, 1010;
Latitude - E5400, XFR E6400, XT2, E6400 ATG, E6500, E4300, E4200, E6400, E5400;
Precision - M6400, M2400, M4400, M4300;
Studio Laptop - 1537, 1737, Studio 1555, Studio 1440 , 1535, 1536, 1735, 1435;
Studio XPS Laptop - 16, 1340;
Vostro Notebook - 1520;
XPS Notebook - Adamo 13
Created : Thu May 21 09:55:31 CDT 2009

What I didn't do is install any firmware updates because I generally avoid them unless necessary so now I'm trying to figure out if I have the appropriate FW to take advantage of the 7.2Mbps "version" of HSDPA... :-/

What I managed to determine from various info screens is the following:

From the [Ericsson] Dell Wireless Manager 2009:
Model D5530
Ver R1B/1
Package ver 5.2.1045.43
Driver package ver 1.0.11.13
From VISTA's own "Local Area Connection Status" Window:
Speed: 7.2Mbps

When I connected, the monitoring SW showed a good-quality HSDPA connection and I visited a few true "broadband" websites including a local one. none the less, surfing averaged at 1Mbps and peaked at 2Mbps... No where near 3.xMbps, much less 7Mbps...

So finally my question: is there any way to determine if I have up-to-date firmware without actually trying to update the firmware? FWIW Dell's (Mini 9) downloadable Firmware file name is R1D06, A01, 2/27/2009 with the following warning:

"This Firmware Update Tool is only intended for the AT&T (XX982) D5530 module. It will not work and is not required for other D5530 versions"


What do you all think?

Thx & cheers 8^)

 

Your card should support 7.2Mbps from factory issue, for some unknown reason the Dell managers does @times display incorrect transfer rates. Try the Sony (original manager) Sony 3g mananger
http://www.sonyericsson.com/cws/support/mobilebroadband/md400g?lc=en&cc=us
your drivers are fine but there are these also if you needed to try and dont flash your hardware with that file in your post.

Title: Communications: Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mini-Card Driver
Version : A07
OEM name : Dell
OEM Version: Driver: v4.50.6.0 Co-installer: v1.0.12.1
Computers : Studio Laptop: 1450
OSes : Windows Vista 32-bit Business,Windows Vista 32-bit Home Basic,Windows Vista 32-bit Home Premium,Windows Vista 32-bit Ultimate,Windows XP Home Edition,Windows XP Media Center Edition,Windows XP Professional
Languages : Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Swedish, Spanish
Created : Monday, August 24, 2009

ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/comm/DELL_WIRELESS-5530-HSPA-MINI_A07_R220893.exe 32bit
ftp://ftp.us.dell.com/comm/DELL_WIRELESS-5530-HSPA-MINI_A07_R220899.exe 64bit

 

I don't know about Vienna, but in the UK we have 7.2Mbps HSDPA and I have an unlocked Dell 5510 expresscard which I have flashed back to it's original Merlin xu870 firmware so I could upgrade it and more to the point actually install it with a 64bit OS......typical Dell does not provide signed drivers for it. Anyway, despite my signal strength being 5 bars (max), I still only get about maximum of 3Mbps. It's like broadband, you so rarely actually get the speed you pay for.

 

Salut,

I monitored the transfer rates via several pgms, so I don't think that's the issue, no, maybe I just haven't had any good luck so far. In my original post I said i maxed out at 2Mbps; well today, it spiked over 3Mbps, so it's hard to tell where the bottleneck is... . I just wanted to ensure the drivers & FW where ok before I approach T-Mobile... :-/

Speaking of drivers, I guess the "A07" is the latest & greatest, right? Thx for the links, btw

p.s. Is your 1330 also equipped with a WWAN card? If so, how did you make out with the GPS feature? I'm not that far yet, but I have taken a peak at Carolina Jone's thread

 

Hey there, thx for the input. Maybe you're right, 7.2Mbps is wishful thinking, but I was hoping to at least see peaks over the former HSDPA limit (3.6Mbs) - just to prove to myself that the HW & SW (drivers) are up to snuff... :-/

 

Hi again,
I'd really like to tinker with the module's GPS capabilities but really feel uncomfortable using her download considering how old it is... has there been no other "updated" / "revised" solution since then...?

EDIT: Nevermind, I'm happy now

 

is there any proper configuration for GPS device? I could not get the GPS signal fixed (I am using the same 5530 card from SE, with driver A07 by the way)

 

firmware should be found in the same place on Dells site that you found the driver.

 

I don't think that my firmware has any problem. Device manager shows no error, and GPS is assigned to COM8. Is there anything else that might be wrong? I am running it on Win7 x64, and this is the only problem that I think is might exist! Please help anybody...