Bluetooth DUN using a Treo 650 & Mac OS X Leopard on T-Mobile

I googled around and found some helpful advice for setting up Bluetooth DUN on Mac OS X, and on Treo 650 with TMobile, but didn’t find any site that described the particular combination described above. Nevertheless, I got it working and thought the notes might be useful to others. The process is actually a little simpler than what is described for OS X 10.4.*. Wanna hear it, here it go:

Pair your Treo with Mac OS X:

1. Make sure your Treo’s bluetooth is turned on, and check the Dial-Up Networking box on the Treo while you’re at it (don’t have a Dial-Up Networking checkbox? You’ll need to do something to enable Bluetooth DUN on your phone, google around for instructions for that).
2. In Mac OS X, open the Bluetooth system preferences screen.
3. Add a new Bluetooth connection by pressing the little plus sign (‘+’).
4. Step through the wizard… it should detect your phone and give you a passphrase to enter on the phone. The phone should display a prompt. Enter the passphrase into the phone and continue.
5. Your phone should show up as a device now. Under ‘services’ it should show “Dial-Up Networking”. If it doesn’t, click the little gear menu (I’m new to Mac OS, so I don’t know if it has a real name), select “Show More Info” and then under the same menu, select “Update Device Services”.

Configure a new serial port:
The following instructions will set up a separate connection in your Network preferences screen. I find this useful but you may be able to skip this section if you’re happy just using the “Bluetooth” connection. YMMV

1. In the Bluetooth preferences screen, select your Treo device.
2. Under the gear menu, select “Edit serial ports…”
3. A port should show up automatically after a second or two (if not, click the plus sign to add one).
4. Name the port whatever you want it to show up as under the Network preferences.
5. Set the port type to “Modem”.

Configure the network connection:

1. Open the Network preferences screen.
2. Select the item representing the serial port you created above (or select “Bluetooth” if you chose not to create a separate item).
3. For the telephone number, enter *99# (note: this number is specific to T-Mobile USA)
4. Leave the Account Name and Password fields blank.
5. Press the “Advanced…” button.
6. In the Modem section, use the following settings:
   • Vendor: Generic
   • Model: GPRS (GSM/3G)
   • APN: internet2.voicestream.com
   • CID: 1
7. Go to the PPP section and configure the Session settings to taste.
8. Press OK. Then Apply your changes.

Now you should be ready to go. Press the Connect button and see if the connection succeeds!

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Update: I’ve noticed that at times when trying to reconnect using the network device created by the steps above, I would get an error saying the device did not exist. Apparently the serial port you create in the “Configure new serial port” stage can disappear from the Treo (it may be after performing a hard reset [that is, removing and reinserting the battery] which, if you’re a Treo owner, you know can be painfully often). The rub is: you can add a new serial port pretty easily (as above), but there’s no convenient way to copy over the network configuration settings to the new port.

The solution, if you haven’t guessed it, is to create a new serial port and call it exactly what you called it before. Then, the existing network configuration settings will apply to the new port. Surf on!

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