munchen800
August 31st, 2009, 09:06 PM
michael@michael-tab:~$apt-get RANT
OK so last year I bought one of those Fujitsu Stylistic LT C-500 tablets off ebay. It shipped to me with a 6gb HDD, no CD, 1 usb w/o BIOS option to boot to usb, 128mb RAM, a D-LINK PCMCIA WIFI card, and Win2k. Well it only took about a month for Win2k to crap out on me, SURPRISE SURPRISE a crappy Windows OS that stopped working. Well I had a 60gb laptop HDD laying around so I figured an upgrade was in order. :) However I was faced with a problem, how do you install a OS with nothing to boot to, no CD, no working OS on the HDD, no PXE(which is available with the docking station-but I didn't have one).
My line of thinking at the time was Windows XP. Doing some research I found people got the Win2k drives to work in XP. EPIC FAIL!!! I pulled the HDD put it in my laptop installed WIN98 put it back in the Tablet, fixed all the errors, then did a in place upgrade to XP. No luck with the drivers though. So passed a week of my life I can never get back.
Next line of thought--"Well I can just use WIN98". FUNNY RIGHT!! Well the Tablet worked, kind of. It is funny the things we take for granted these days. Like bluetooth, functioning usb, and a 32bit GUI. Well Win98 doesn't have any of these things. No bluetooth support of any kind. D-link does not make a WIN98 driver for the card it shipped with so I had to fall back on a old usb WIFI NIC. HAHA It barely worked, all I could do was connect to the internet. Well that is fine except I store all my music and Videos on a Ubuntu based file server, ans I couldn't connect to it. So I needed something better. Another month of my life I will never get back.
Now the fun stuff--"LINUX". Many failures but in the end success, but not a wast of time because I learned a lot. Here is the short list of the Distro's I tried , Fedora 8, 9 and 10, Suse 10.1, .2, Backtrack 2, 3 HDD installs, Slax 5, 6 also HDD installs, Knoppix, DSL, and of course Ubuntu. Now I tried Ubuntu 8.04.1 first, of course, However there is a bug with the touch screen driver, AKA fpit, and when I went with intreped my setting were off the first time. So I went through the others listed above, but in the end(12 months later) Ubuntu 8.10 Works Great.
OK I am done, Now I will tell you how to get it working.
FIRST: USE UBUNTU 8.10 !!IMPORTANT!! Download burn to cd.
NEXT: Pull the HDD out of the tablet and put it in a laptop or use and adapter to put in a desktop. There is no way around this. Run the install. After that STOP AND THINK. Do you need any drivers for WIFI(prol not but make sure). Once you put the HDD Back YOU WILL NEED INTERNET!! Also a usb hub with a keyboard and mouse during set up helps but at least a usb keyboard is necessary. Now did you install, does it run, is your PCMCIA WIFI working? GOOD
While it is still in the laptop/desktop run your package manager. Install:
Setserial
Fpit
I also installed Fluxbox For day to day usage. You will find with only 128mb RAM Gnome runs slow.
NEXT: Put the HDD back in the tablet. Start in up, It my say something about LOW-GRAPHICS Mode, if it does let it auto-reconfigure this first time only.
Lets get the touch screen working
OK open your terminal. RUN
dmesg | grep /dev/ttyS*
I should print out something like this
/dev/ttyS0, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS1, UART, 16550A, Port: 0xfd68, IRQ:5
/dev/ttyS2, UART, unknown, Port: 0x03e8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS3, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x02e8, IRQ:3
It might be somewhat different but what you are looking for is 0xfd68. Write down the IRQand the ttyS number. You will need them soon.
Now RUN
sudo gedit /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf
Comment out every line except the one line that has the serial port that you noted earlier. Then change 16550A to 16450 on the serial port needed. It should look like this.
/dev/ttyS1 uart 16450 port 0xfd68 irq 5 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test
MAKE SURE THE IRQ MATCHES WHAT YOU WROTE DOWN OR IT WILL CAUSE THE SYSTEM TO CRASH!!!!!! SAVE and EXIT
Next RUN
dpkg-reconfigure setserial
Using the arrow keys and enter set it to manual
and last but not least RUN
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
It will look something like this
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Now I was Puzzled. There is no ServerLayout Section. This was the Problem I ran into the first time. This Time However I made one. :) Add this above the Section "Device"
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Default Screen" 0 0
Input Device "Mouse1" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection
Then Add This Below Device "Configured Video Device" EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "fpit"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS_" # <----Add the ttyS number we wrote down #
Option "BaudRate" "9600"
Option "Passive"
Option "TrackRandR" "true"
EndSection
That should do it. Restart the the tablet and use the touchscreen.
I would like to thank the entire Linux community for making this possible. I must have look at 15 different forum postings about this, and through a combination of the relevant parts my Fujitsu C-500 is running wonderful and is OPEN-SOURCE. I hope this will help someone else out the way others helped me. If you have any questions just ask of e-mail me. Once again thank You EVERYONE The Linux Community is the BEST. Take Care.
OK so last year I bought one of those Fujitsu Stylistic LT C-500 tablets off ebay. It shipped to me with a 6gb HDD, no CD, 1 usb w/o BIOS option to boot to usb, 128mb RAM, a D-LINK PCMCIA WIFI card, and Win2k. Well it only took about a month for Win2k to crap out on me, SURPRISE SURPRISE a crappy Windows OS that stopped working. Well I had a 60gb laptop HDD laying around so I figured an upgrade was in order. :) However I was faced with a problem, how do you install a OS with nothing to boot to, no CD, no working OS on the HDD, no PXE(which is available with the docking station-but I didn't have one).
My line of thinking at the time was Windows XP. Doing some research I found people got the Win2k drives to work in XP. EPIC FAIL!!! I pulled the HDD put it in my laptop installed WIN98 put it back in the Tablet, fixed all the errors, then did a in place upgrade to XP. No luck with the drivers though. So passed a week of my life I can never get back.
Next line of thought--"Well I can just use WIN98". FUNNY RIGHT!! Well the Tablet worked, kind of. It is funny the things we take for granted these days. Like bluetooth, functioning usb, and a 32bit GUI. Well Win98 doesn't have any of these things. No bluetooth support of any kind. D-link does not make a WIN98 driver for the card it shipped with so I had to fall back on a old usb WIFI NIC. HAHA It barely worked, all I could do was connect to the internet. Well that is fine except I store all my music and Videos on a Ubuntu based file server, ans I couldn't connect to it. So I needed something better. Another month of my life I will never get back.
Now the fun stuff--"LINUX". Many failures but in the end success, but not a wast of time because I learned a lot. Here is the short list of the Distro's I tried , Fedora 8, 9 and 10, Suse 10.1, .2, Backtrack 2, 3 HDD installs, Slax 5, 6 also HDD installs, Knoppix, DSL, and of course Ubuntu. Now I tried Ubuntu 8.04.1 first, of course, However there is a bug with the touch screen driver, AKA fpit, and when I went with intreped my setting were off the first time. So I went through the others listed above, but in the end(12 months later) Ubuntu 8.10 Works Great.
OK I am done, Now I will tell you how to get it working.
FIRST: USE UBUNTU 8.10 !!IMPORTANT!! Download burn to cd.
NEXT: Pull the HDD out of the tablet and put it in a laptop or use and adapter to put in a desktop. There is no way around this. Run the install. After that STOP AND THINK. Do you need any drivers for WIFI(prol not but make sure). Once you put the HDD Back YOU WILL NEED INTERNET!! Also a usb hub with a keyboard and mouse during set up helps but at least a usb keyboard is necessary. Now did you install, does it run, is your PCMCIA WIFI working? GOOD
While it is still in the laptop/desktop run your package manager. Install:
Setserial
Fpit
I also installed Fluxbox For day to day usage. You will find with only 128mb RAM Gnome runs slow.
NEXT: Put the HDD back in the tablet. Start in up, It my say something about LOW-GRAPHICS Mode, if it does let it auto-reconfigure this first time only.
Lets get the touch screen working
OK open your terminal. RUN
dmesg | grep /dev/ttyS*
I should print out something like this
/dev/ttyS0, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x03f8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS1, UART, 16550A, Port: 0xfd68, IRQ:5
/dev/ttyS2, UART, unknown, Port: 0x03e8, IRQ:4
/dev/ttyS3, UART, 16550A, Port: 0x02e8, IRQ:3
It might be somewhat different but what you are looking for is 0xfd68. Write down the IRQand the ttyS number. You will need them soon.
Now RUN
sudo gedit /var/lib/setserial/autoserial.conf
Comment out every line except the one line that has the serial port that you noted earlier. Then change 16550A to 16450 on the serial port needed. It should look like this.
/dev/ttyS1 uart 16450 port 0xfd68 irq 5 baud_base 115200 spd_normal skip_test
MAKE SURE THE IRQ MATCHES WHAT YOU WROTE DOWN OR IT WILL CAUSE THE SYSTEM TO CRASH!!!!!! SAVE and EXIT
Next RUN
dpkg-reconfigure setserial
Using the arrow keys and enter set it to manual
and last but not least RUN
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
It will look something like this
Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
Device "Configured Video Device"
EndSection
Now I was Puzzled. There is no ServerLayout Section. This was the Problem I ran into the first time. This Time However I made one. :) Add this above the Section "Device"
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "X.org Configured"
Screen 0 "Default Screen" 0 0
Input Device "Mouse1" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection
Then Add This Below Device "Configured Video Device" EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "fpit"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS_" # <----Add the ttyS number we wrote down #
Option "BaudRate" "9600"
Option "Passive"
Option "TrackRandR" "true"
EndSection
That should do it. Restart the the tablet and use the touchscreen.
I would like to thank the entire Linux community for making this possible. I must have look at 15 different forum postings about this, and through a combination of the relevant parts my Fujitsu C-500 is running wonderful and is OPEN-SOURCE. I hope this will help someone else out the way others helped me. If you have any questions just ask of e-mail me. Once again thank You EVERYONE The Linux Community is the BEST. Take Care.