HOW TO Set Up a Wacom Serial Tablet in Ubuntu

[zxcvbs3]

Hi im having this problem with my hp elitebook 2740p tablet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3cfg4NolWQ

When doing intensive tasks the mouse gets crazy, if i disable the touch from xinput, the mouse works ok.
Also disabling any of the wacom devices (stylus, eraser, or touch), disables all the functionality.

⎡ Virtual core pointer                        id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                  id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ PS/2 Generic Mouse                          id=11    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad                  id=12    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet stylus                  id=13    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet eraser                  id=15    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ Serial Wacom Tablet touch                   id=16    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                       id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard                 id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                                id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                   id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                                id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP Webcam [2 MP Macro]                      id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard                id=10    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HP WMI hotkeys                              id=14    [slave  keyboard (3)]

I know there is an official hp firmware fix:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...tem=ob-94092-1

Thanks.

[zxcvbs3]

Hi searching a little more, this is a hp firmware issue.
I couldnt get to install the lastest firmware.

Before doing anything please check instructions, and display models (flashing a wrong firmware can break the touch functionality). I downloaded:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp49001-49500/sp49201.exe
I couldnt get to install the lastest firmware. Using it on windows it searches for a Hydis Display, but as win detects the driver as generic pnp monitor,(dont know what string is searching the installer), it ends on detecting display.
My screen is a Hydis. This is the hw id (on win):

MONITOR\BOE08A0
*PNP09FF

How can i unpack this exe, to get the firmware files and loaders? i tried some tools like universal extractor without success, will try ollydbg.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ategory/alerts

[zxcvbs3]

Hi searching a little more, this is a hp firmware issue.
I couldnt get to install the lastest firmware.

Before doing anything please check instructions, and display models (flashing a wrong firmware can break the touch functionality). I downloaded:
ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softpaq/sp49001-49500/sp49201.exe
I couldnt get to install the lastest firmware. Using it on windows it searches for a Hydis Display, but as win detects the driver as generic pnp monitor,(dont know what string is searching the installer), it ends on detecting display.
My screen is a Hydis. This is the hw id (on win):

MONITOR\BOE08A0
*PNP09FF

How can i unpack this exe, to get the firmware files and loaders? i tried some tools like universal extractor without success, will try ollydbg.
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...ategory/alerts

PLEASE READ THIS:

DONT USE sp49201.exe FW PATCH, it will make the fan work harder, and on linux at least on ubuntu, shut off the machine after some minutes.
Dont know about the last patch because i couldnt try it, but if you do PLEASE, USE THE FIRMWARE UPDATE TOOLS TO BACK UP, YOUR FACTORY FW, AND THEN TRY UPDATE. THE DEFAULT BAT DOESNT MAKE THIS BACKUP.

Well i installed win7 32 bits (i was trying the wacom firmware updater on Win8 x64), it ugraded to the lastest fw fix ( SP52649 ) 35D_0F0E/35D_0C6F REV: A
At the moment i dont get ghost clicks, but ubuntu halts/shut down, when the cpu load is higher.

[daco2]

Hi,
I'm trying to reinstall my Intuos GD-0608-R tablet on ubuntu 14.04 (which worked very well on 10.04) with no success.
I don't know if it's an IV or V protocol so I tried both :
- with wacom_serial, the pointer move but the behavior is anarchic
- with wacom_seral5, no module is loaded and nothing appear in xorg.0.log

I have to change the tablet ID to 0x3e and 0x3f otherwise the tsc40 module is loaded.
Is there someone to help me ?
Thanks.

[daco2]

Problem solved !
After a lot of hours testing drivers, I found the solution :
The wacom_v_init function in inputattach.c doesn't test every speed connection while wacom_iv_init does.

I just had to change to this in wacom_v_init :
setline(fd, CS8, B9600);
if (write(fd, "$\r", 5) != 5)
return -1;
usleep(100 * 1000);
return 0;
where "$/r" is to reset baud rate to 9600 bauds. Is it just my hardware posing problem ?

Changing SERIO_WACOM_V to 0x3e or more avoid module tsc40 loading. And no need to put a wacom_rule.
Now everything is working well under ubuntu 14.04 !!!

[Brent_Santin]

Hi,

I've been trying to get my Wacom ArtPad II (KT-0405-R, protocol IV tablet.) working under Lubuntu Trusty Tahr (Ubuntu 14.04 LTS) and haven't had any success. Part of this has been that there seems to be an overwhelming and confusing amount of tutorials online, all from different dates and with different instructions, and no way to determine which one works with the latest release of the operating system. Some early tutorials suggest patching the kernal to add serial tablet support, other later ones say that serial tablet support has been added to the kernal and their is no need to patch, and still other threads suggest that serial support was dropped from the Wacom drivers at some point.

I'm really not sure what advice to follow. It also seems that the latest update to the original tutorial in this thread was made in 2012, so I don't even know if any of the information is still valid.

What I have tried (without success) is to install the Wacom drivers from the Synaptic Software repository:

xserver-xorg-input-wacom 0.23.0 ubuntu
libwacom2-dbg
libwacom-common

There also seems to be a package on the repository which I've been reluctant to install because it doesn't install by default and I'm not sure what it does (description is simply "This is used for upgrading from precise to trusty"):

xserver-xorg-input-wacom-lts-trusty
xserver-xorg-input-wacom-lts-trusty-dbg

Then I edited my xorg.conf file to include the devices as suggested in the first message of this thread:

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "Serial"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "ForceDevice" "Serial"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "Serial"
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
InputDevice "stylus"
InputDevice "eraser"
InputDevice "cursor"
EndSection

Rebooted, etc. none of this did anything to detect my serial tablet.

So I'm not really sure what to do. I only switched to Linux about 8 months ago. I really liked the way Lubuntu detected and made a lot of my old hardware useable again (SCSI scanner, etc.) when the newer versions of Windows had abandoned them. But it seems too bad that this serial tablet cannot be used (but I probably just don't know what I'm doing).

I'm not afraid of Command Line work (I grew up using MS-DOS and the Amiga CLI), I just am not sure which instructions I should even be using, or whether serial tablet support is even something that is possible anymore.

Is there anyone that has knowledge in this area? I'm not sure even where to start.

Thanks.

[tokenrove]

The driver for your tablet is included in the Linux kernel as of version 3.17. You'll need a corresponding version of inputattach and so on. Unfortunately I can't speak for the Ubuntu side of things and I'm not sure what steps you'll need to take, but you will need the new driver in one form or another to get it working. I'm sure the instructions can be updated to be much simpler once distributions are shipping this kernel by default. You do need the driver, a udev rule, and inputattach; you shouldn't need to edit any X configuration to get it working -- any instructions about that are probably very out of date.

(By the way, I wrote this driver because I feel the same way about older hardware; Linux should continue to support devices people are still using.)

Oh, if you need to get the last source for the driver before it went into the kernel, please see Hans de Goede's repository on github:
https://github.com/jwrdegoede/wacom_serial

[Brent_Santin]

The driver for your tablet is included in the Linux kernel as of version 3.17.

Hi Tokenrove,

Thanks for the reply. Sorry for my delay in responding - I am new to Linux and had to research many of the terms you used.
I used the "uname -r" command to try and determine my kernal version in Lubuntu Trusty Tahr.

The command reported:
3.13.0-43-generic

Which I assume means I am several versions behind the 3.17 kernal that would include the driver I need.
So for now I'm stuck?

I don't know how to get the driver otherwise. I've never compiled anything from source code before.

[tokenrove]

Which I assume means I am several versions behind the 3.17 kernal that would include the driver I need.
So for now I'm stuck?

I don't know how to get the driver otherwise. I've never compiled anything from source code before.

Perhaps someone else here can help you but I'm afraid I won't be too much help; at least the situation should improve in the future when this kernel is shipped with your distribution.

If you're willing to try, you should be able to piece together instructions from this thread and my blog post on the topic: http://www.cipht.net/2011/07/02/wacom_serial-initial-release.html; I'll try to give you an overview of what you need to do. You'll probably want the last version of the driver from the github repository I linked to in my previous post; you can clone it with

git clone https://github.com/jwrdegoede/wacom_serial.git

; this means in step 1 in my blog post, you'll clone instead of unpacking the tar.gz file, but otherwise cd into the directory that is created and run

make all

. If you get any errors, you're missing some packages, most likely build-essential and linux-headers-<your kernel version>, which you can install with

apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-amd64

or similar. I'm afraid that I can't be too specific because I'm primarily a Debian user.

Let us know how it goes.

[kb8923]

If you're willing to try, you should be able to piece together instructions from this thread and my blog post on the topic: http://www.cipht.net/2011/07/02/wacom_serial-initial-release.html

Let us know how it goes.

Hi, I am affraid this link is dead, that's too bad, I am also trying to make my Intuos GD 405-R work with my new Linux machine. Right now I'm on Linux 3.13.0-45-generic x86_64 and KDE 4.14.2. I was able to use this tablet on my previous Linux system, but haven't been able to do so on this new one .