How to turn on 3G modem (EM770?), and Bluetooth?

[timbp]

I have just bought a new (generic) laptop, sans OS, on which I have installed Linux Mint 14 Xfce (64-bit).
I am unable to activate the built-in 3G modem or the Bluetooth.

I know the Bluetooth was working when I originally booted from the Live CD. Wifi is turned on/off by Fn-F11 and Bluetooth by Fn-F12. I accidentally turned off the Bluetooth when trying to turn on the wifi. At the time I didn't worry as I assumed I could just turn Bluetooth on again later.
I did not have a SIM card available when I installed Mint, so I just ignored the 3G modem, again assuming I could set it up later.

Now I cannot get either device to turn on, and I am cannot find any evidence that Linux knows they exist (but I may not be looking in the right places).

Bluetooth is supposed to turn on/off with Fn-F12, and the single wifi/bluetooth LED should be orange if bluetooth is turned on. As far as I can tell, pressing Fn-F12 does nothing.
The 3G modem is supposed to turn on/off with Fn-[hyphen/underscore]. There is no hardware indicator of whether it is on, and I don't know where to look in Linux for a software indicator.

I suspect that these hotkeys are not actually doing anything, although Fn-F11 works perfectly for the wifi. If so, then can I turn the devices on some other way? and then how do I fix the hotkeys? Or if the problem is nothing to do with the keyboard, where do I start looking and what do I look for?

I can't see anything in lspci or lsusb that looks like either device. rfkill list shows the wifi device, but nothing else.

I found something relevant to Bluetooth at http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=191&t=56621 although it is from 2011 so I don't know if it's still relevant. I will try it when I get home (don't have access to the laptop right now).

I don't know what the Bluetooth model is (it's not listed separately on the laptop order form, and as I said nothing in lspci or lsusb appears to be it).
The 3G modem is listed on the order form as EM770/Ericsson (although searching EM770 suggests it should be Huawei).

Any advice welcomed.

Thanks
Tim

[timbp]

Well, I started working through the suggestions in the thread I linked before.

I'm not sure what did it, but lsusb output now includes the line

Code: Select all

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bdb:1904 Ericsson Business Mobile Networks BV F3607gw Mobile Broadband Module

And the line appears and disappears with use of the Fn-[hyphen/underscore] hotkey that is supposed to turn the device on/off.

So I guess for that I now just need to make sure appropriate drivers are installed and it should work.
How do I check for the drivers?
EDIT: Just tried connecting to 3G and everything worked perfectly.


But I still can't find the Bluetooth device. Any suggestions on how to proceed?

[timbp]

Is there nobody who can suggest anything to try?

[eanfrid]

You can usually enable/disable such device by doing this in the BIOS.

[timbp]

Thanks. I did look in the BIOS a couple of times, but could not find anything that looked relevant. Nevertheless, I did reset the BIOS to defaults, and that might have been what made the 3G suddenly appear and start working (or it may have been one of the other things I tried from that other thread).

Today I started up the laptop and, lo and behold, a Bluetooth icon is appearing in the indicator area. And clicking on it produces a menu, the top item of which is "Turn Bluetooth Off", which seems to imply that Bluetooth is currently on. However, clicking on Adapters.. produces an alert box with nothing but a Close button, and clicking on "SEtup new device..." gives me a message "No adapters found".

So at least now I have the Bluetooth software starting up -- does that mean the OS is detecting the Bluetooth during startup?
But I still can't actually get the device working.