I have been struggling with this for some time since I installed the latest Ubuntu on a new Dell laptop. In the previous version of Ubuntu things simply worked, you would plug it in, it would show up as a CDROM and then you would umount that and the modem would show up. In the recent version that did not seem to be the case and I could not figure out how to get usb_storage to let this damn cdrom drive go, but finally after a long series of failed attempts I pieced together how to get this damn thing working.

There are a few different problems to contend with. First Ubuntu 9.04 removed the usbserial as a module and instead compiled it as a part of the kernel. Therefore in certain cases usbserial will not recognize your device.

In the latest version of 9.04 with the current revision of the kernel, this does not seem to be a problem, simply eject the cdrom device and it should see your card; i.e. "eject /dev/sr1". Look at dmesg to see where it is creating the drive, i.e. "/dev/sr1" or something as such in the /dev folder.

If this is the case you need to tell it to do so by adding a line to the kernel... This is messy and not for the inexperienced or the faint of heart. You have to edit your grub menu list and add:

usbserial.vendor=0x1410 usbserial.product=0x1450

So it looks like this:

/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-xx-generic root=UUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx ro quiet splash usbserial.vendor=0x1410 usbserial.product=0x1450

Next you have to reboot your computer.

Then insert your card, it will still not detect it, and that's because the damn thing needs to be ejected. So to eject it type:

eject /dev/sr1

Now the system should recognize the modem and you should be able to connect to the internet. There I saved you days of work in figuring out how to get this to work and contemplating downgrading to intrepid. You should hire me!