A better way to connect Macs to a PC's shared Bluetooth

Oct 24, '03 10:56:00AM

Contributed by: Anonymous

I saw this hint you have about sharing a PC's Internet with a Mac over Bluetooth. That's great, but it involves too much configuration and a terminal window login every time. Here's an alternative that "just works," mainly for owners of Symbian based phones.

The PC Suite software supplied with those phones has a server that hosts such connections over Bluetooth (and also IR and cables) for the phones, but it also works with other devices, like Palms and Macs. To make it work, do the following:

On the PC:
Right click on the mRouter tray icon and make sure Bluetooth serial ports are enabled.

On the Mac:
Make a new Bluetooth serial port, called something like Bluetooth-mRouter. Pair it with the Bluetooth Serial Port service on your host PC. Then set it to Outgoing and RS232 mode. Then load up the Network prefs panel, and configure the new port. Make sure it's using PPP. Under PPP options, you can safely deselect "Disconnect if idle." Under Modem, select Null Modem 115200 and deselect "Wait for dial tone."

Now use the Internet Connect menu, select the port you just made, and then select Connect. Hey presto, Internet sharing over Bluetooth. The only limit seems to be that although mRouter can handle up to 460000bps, the Mac Null Modem driver is capped at 115200, so if anyone wants to make a better Null Modem driver, please respond.

Finally, non-Symbian phone owners can download the PC Suite freely from Nokia or SonyEricsson, too. Install them and then remove everything except for the mRouter executable from their startup menu, and they're good to go.

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Mac OS X Hints
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