I recently received a Dell Mini 10 with WWAN/GPS onboard. I was quite chuffed with this purchase because I got it on the cheap, and had always wanted a device that merged all these technologies into a unit that I could conceivably get some use out of.

Let’s cut to the chase. If you spec your Mini 9/10 with WWAN, GPS, or both, it will come with a mini PCI-E card installed called the Dell Wireless 5530 (aka Ericsson F3507). If you’re feeling confident you can buy one of these separately and chuck it try installing it in your laptop, compatibility permitting. The major stumbling block however is that the WWAN (and perhaps also GPS) components require antennae which are usually secreted in the bezel around the display. When you purchase a unit specified with this card it gets built from the ground up with the required chassis elements.

Many have complained that getting this adapter working is a right royal pain in the arse, and so I’m going to write a quick guide that worked for me under XP.

First of all you need to realise that there is a driver level and an application level problem, and both need to be fixed to enable you to use the GPS on your Mini.

Driver level

Dell and others in their infinite wisdom often provide drivers that do not expose the GPS element of the card. This is most likely because you wanted WWAN but not GPS, and thus they included the 5530, but have crippled it in this admittedly inventive and annoying way. Rather cheeky methinks, but that’s their prerogative.

A quick check under device manager will let you know if you have a unit with crippled drivers. Look under Ports (COM & LPT) and there should be an entry for a Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard GPS Port (COMx) – where x = a number dependent on the amount of other bits and pieces grabbing serial ports in your system. Mine was present from the start, but I still ended up faffing around with drivers simply because I like to know I’m using the most up to date code that supports my equipment – it can make the difference between a glitchy or flawless experience. If you can see a GPS device then you can probably skip the rest of this section and go straight to the software level issue, although I would always recommend being thorough and going through a little short term hassle to grab the latest files.

A quick look on Dell Support lists the latest drivers for the 5530 as being A06, although a quick Google search will reveal forum posts noting that A07 drivers are out in the wild. I’m not sure if Dell retracted these drivers for a reason (Maybe because they include GPS functionality outright?) but the links to them on the site were all dead.

However, using a combination of the driver revision and Dell identification inferred elsewhere I found that the A7 drivers could be downloaded HERE.

Alternatively, jeffijaffa at MyDellMini extracted the drivers from the installer and uploaded them to the forum. Now, I spent a good few hours using this driver pack and I can testify that installing the 8 DRIVERS manually is not a pretty experience. Now the A7 installer is available we’ll use that in preference the far more fiddly manual method. If anyone must use a manual install then leave a comment on the article if you need any pointers.

Flick back into device manager and check the driver versions of the currently installed devices. I must say that in haste I forgot to check the driver versions that ship with the admittedly bloated preinstalled copy of XP - I’m sure someone can comment below RE this. For my fresh install with A07 drivers the versions were as follows:

Modem >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Modem >>> 4.50.6.0 >>> 19/12/2008

Networking Adapters >>> Ports (COM & LPT) >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard NetworkAdapter >>> 4.50.6.0 >>> 19/12/2008

Ports (COM & LPT) >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard (COM5) >>> 4.50.6.0 >>> 19/12/2008

Ports (COM & LPT) >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard GPS Port (COM6) >>> 1.0.0.29 >>> 07/01/2009

Smart Card Readers >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard PC SC Port >>> 6.0.0.5 >>> 06/04/2009

Universal Serial Bus controllers >>> Dell Wireless 5530 HSPA Mobile Broadband Minicard Device >>> 4.50.6.0 >>> 19/12/2008

The first job therefore is to uninstall the current driver pack, which is listed under Add/Remove programs as something like “Dell 5530 Mobile Broadband Driver Package”. Give it a reboot after you’ve done this, and cancel any dialogs asking you to provide drivers. Then simply run the executable installer for the new A07 driver package.

Application level

I tried using Autoroute & Google Maps at this point but had no joy. Although the GPS port is there, it needs to be triggered by the software, otherwise it won’t output any data. Now, it is possible to enable the GPS data port output without using additional software by opening issuing some commands through a terminal, so bear that in mind if you’re somehow a devoted fan of Vodafone Mobile Connect (VMC). I however, won’t be going through this method, although it is explained HERE.

First uninstall VMC. It’s pretty resource heavy and only works with their services - instead we’ll use the Ericsson branded dashboard which also allows us to enable GPS functionality. I’m led to believe that Dell do rebrand this and offer it themselves, but Ericsson’s version is slightly newer at 5.3.2076.12, so it makes sense to use that.

Once the Ericsson software (Wireless Manager 5) is installed load it up and browse to View >>> Settings. Under Radio Power tick the combo box to Enable radio all the time. If this isn’t done then the WWAN card - and GPS by extension, will fail to function unless the software is running and set to enable the radio.

Dell provide a basic tray utility that allows the WWAN card to be disabled at any time, and I choose to use this in preference to having the Wireless Manager permanently resident in memory. To those of you who won’t be using GPS unless you’re online, or are particularly mindful about battery life, you may wish to set the options to enable the radio only when the software is running, and disable it when it closes. Accept the warning and your settings will be saved.

The last job is to head to View >>> GPS and turn the GPS on.

Mission accomplished. Your GPS software of choice (I use MS Autoroute) will function as expected once you point it to the relevant COM port.