SIMcom SIM7906E PCIe LTE module issue

mattijoutkoski

Hi there,

After 20 year break playing again with FreeBSD. I am trying to get SIMcom SIM7906E LTE PCIe module work on mini PC (with 4x LAN). This module is using pretty much the same AT command set than SIM7600E (that is very close to SIM7100E). I have found a patch, where support for SIM7600E has been added:

https://reviews.freebsd.org/rS342037

What happens is, that I can see the SIM7906E during the boot as recognized USB device, but without any (com) ports. SIM7xxx they should to have 6x com/tty ports, where one of them (3rd I think) is interface for AT command. And when there is no tty ports found out, using the module with pfSense does not work.

I don't have SIM7100/7600E in my hand so that I could verify how does it look in FreeBSD. Any ideas what should to be done, check, patched, that this module could get online with FreeBSD.

I am now working with pfSense distribution with 11.2 FreeBSD.

All comments welcome!

stephenw10

What does usbconfig dump_device_desc show the modem as?

Steve

mattijoutkoski

I got some feedback from FreeBSD forum, looks like need re-compile u3g.c and try to move it to pfSense. Need to install standard FreeBSD to do that.

https://forums.freebsd.org/threads/simcom-sim7906e.74440/#post-455237

stephenw10

Yeah, there we go that VID:PID is not recognised by u3g so no com ports are created. Recompiling u3g to include that would likely allow it. If you do that route you should test it in FreeBSD first.

You may also be able to change the ID of the device to something that is already recognised. Some modems will allow you to set the ID directly using AT commands. If the hardware is sufficiently similar it might come straight up. You would have to do that from Linux or Windows.

Steve