Contents |
General
As part of my job, I found myself installing Ubuntu Linux onto a Panasonic Toughbook CF-18 Tablet PC (model CF-18FDHZBVE). This model comes in two versions - one with a touchscreen (i.e. you can use your finger) and one with an active digitizer (i.e. you need the pen). The digitizer model is the one in this article.
This machine is being built as a triple boot system with Windows XP, Ubuntu Linux (5.10 - "Breezy Badger"), and FreeBSD 5.4 for wireless security testing. For reference, due to the triple boot requirement, this is how the partitioning was done using Linux fdisk:
- /dev/hda1 30G NTFS (Windows XP)
- /dev/hda2 200M Ext3 /boot
- /dev/hda3 10G UFS (FreeBSD)
- /dev/hda5 2G Swap
- /dev/hda6 18G Ext3 /
And here is the proof of the pudding - using the digitizer to sketch in GIMP:
Installation
Installation was rather smooth as I had the external USB DVD/CD drive for the machine (the CF-VDRRT3). A standard install of Ubuntu 5.10 was put on the machine, with the exception of the non-standard partitioning.
Graphic Card
The graphic card is integrated into the Intel 855GM chipset. This is supported by the i915/i810 drivers out of the box. Rotation using XRandR is not supported out of the box with this driver, however there appear to be some patches that I have not tried yet that allow this - you can find a link here. If a permanent rotation is wanted, you can add Option "Rotate" "CW" or "CCW" to the Device section of your xorg.conf for clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation of the picture in X (see below). You will also need to set the input devices in X to the same rotation mode - read the wacom(4) man page for how to do this.
Note that this configuration is for the Active Digitizer version of this model. For the Touchscreen version, you could try the commercial X server from Xi Graphics here.
Xorg
The essential parts in /etc/X11/xorg.conf are:
| File: /etc/X11/xorg.conf |
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Wacom Digitizer"
Driver "wacom"
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS25"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4"
EndSection
Section "Device"
### Available Driver options are:-
Identifier "Card0"
Driver "i810"
VendorName "Intel Corp."
BoardName "82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device"
BusID "PCI:0:2:0"
# Enable to Rotate the Display Clockwise
#Option "Rotate" "CW"
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
... add in the following line ...
InputDevice "Wacom Digitizer" "SendCoreEvents"
... end of additions ...
EndSection
|
Pen - Wacom Active Digitizer
The pen digitizer is a serial Wacom digitizer. This has an unusual serial port on my machine, however it was picked up by Ubuntu as /dev/ttyS25, on port 0x0148 and irq 4, and autoconfigured successfully. I found this by looking through the dmesg output as the machine has no other serial ports. This can be tested by installing the wacom-tools package, and running the following (as root):
wacdump -f c100 /dev/ttyS25
If everything is working, you should get position and button press status reported by this tool.
USB
Works out of the box.
Ethernet controller
Works out of the box with the 8139too driver that ships with Ubuntu 5.10.
Wireless LAN
Works out of the box with the ipw2200 driver that ships with Ubuntu 5.10.
Internal Modem
Not tested or setup as of yet.
PCMCIA adapter
Works out of the box.
Bluetooth
Works out of the box.
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Comments (7)
Thanx for testing Ubuntu on that machine! I have a CF-18 myself (however only a touchscreen and not the full tablet as you can't get that with a swedish keyboard). I tried installing Suse 9.2 before, but couldn't get the WLAN nor the touchscreen to work, which was quite annoying.
Regarding getting the touchscreen to work, do you know how to do this for a "plain touchscreen" (not full tablet)?
You mentioned that there are some patches for rotating the screen that you haven't tested yet. If you do, I would very much like to get some more on how that falls out. I don't want the screen to be fixed in the rotated view, but flexible. I'm quite new to Linux, but I'm trying to get my machine completely free of M$, using as little space as possible for the OS. Any chance you could give me a more thorough description of the process for screen rotation? Any chance I might even connect Linux with the buttons on the side of the machine (e.g. the rotation-button)?
If Ubuntu can do all that I need (together with Paragon NTFS for Linux), that's what I'm going for! Hey, can I even move files on an existing NTFS-drive to a Linux-formatted drive?
Hoping for any kind of response.. :)
Posted by Raelic | November 16, 2005 8:35 AM
Posted on November 16, 2005 08:35
Well, on this CF-18 I'm working on Ubu 5.10 installed fine but the touch screen was not detected as a serial device. It is enabled in BIOS.
Posted by Kimmo Veijalainen | November 17, 2005 4:17 AM
Posted on November 17, 2005 04:17
I have updated the entry because the version I have doesn't have a touchscreen - it has the pen digitizer (i.e. if I touch the screen with my finger, I don't get any results - I need to use the pen for the screen to work). I haven't got a touchscreen CF-18 to play with. One link I did find was this one - http://www.xig.com/Pages/Summit/Laptop/SupportSpecs/Panasonic/ToughBookCF-18.html where you can apparently buy a X server for this platform.
Posted by Justin Clarke![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.justinclarke.com/nav-commenters.gif)
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December 21, 2005 4:56 PM
Posted on December 21, 2005 16:56
Hi you appear to have had some sucess installing Ubuntu on your CF-18. I wonder if you can help: I have just got a CF-18, it came with no operating system installed just a formatted 40gb hard drive, the problem I am having is I am unable to get it to boot from a usb dvd drive, I can connect a usb floppy drive & then install dos 6.22 or windows 3.1 but nothing else. It just doesnt seem to recognise the usb dvd drive (this works fine in my main PC) any ideas ??
Posted by nigel Mcloughlin | March 4, 2008 10:10 PM
Posted on March 4, 2008 22:10
I used the USB DVD drive (a panasonic one) which was the official accessory (ordered with the machine). This worked fine for me - I just needed to change the boot options so I could boot from the CD drive.
Posted by Justin Clarke | March 4, 2008 11:23 PM
Posted on March 4, 2008 23:23
Hi there I have been trying to load Linux onto a 2nd hand cf18b I have just bought but the new Samsung se-s204 usb drive isn't recognised by the bios... in the end I borrowed an old "liteon drive" from work and managed to load windows XP (Linux is still work in progress) my question: is there a list of 3rd party drives that are compatible with the cf18b? (I should add that I tried booting off the Samsung drive on myAcer laptop & it worked fine) :-(
Posted by nigel Mcloughlin | March 11, 2008 7:18 PM
Posted on March 11, 2008 19:18
Not that I know of :-(
Posted by Justin Clarke | March 11, 2008 11:11 PM
Posted on March 11, 2008 23:11