Re: [Linuxwacom-discuss] Serial tablet and linuxwacom in 2016

[Jason G. <kil...@gm...>]

On 03/23/2016 06:51 PM, nazmo wrote:
> (Nazmi from Normandy France, 17., student)
> Hi, 
> I have a rather old CT-0405-R wacom PenPartner tablet, once I managed to get
> it partially working under windows 7 with some drivers from wacom, then I
> switched to Linux Debian Jessie 64 and I searched on how to use it, I found
> some old articles detailling on how to proceed and some more recent data
> (2010s) that said that legacy serial tablets are not working anymore with
> the linuxwacom driver, is it so ? Why ? Is there a way to overcome this
> situation ?
> 
> I found this guy: https://codelab.wordpress.com/2010/02/21/wacom-hacking/
> he apparently made a patch, would I need it, would it have any positive
> effect on the situation ?
> 
> I also looked at the wiki:
> http://linuxwacom.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Serial_Help
> and I found that apparently it is possible to get that working by doing all
> the configuration and stuff but I would need a X server version prior to
> v1.7 which I doubt I have (if you know how to discover my version of the
> x.org server, I would be interested too).
> 
> Thanks in advance for your time 
> 

Support for serial tablets (other than those serial sensors built into
tablet PCs) was removed during the transition from the old "linuxwacom"
driver to the current "xf86-input-wacom" driver at the end of 2009. I
can only guess why support was dropped, but my guess would be that it
was deemed too much work to port into the new driver given how few
people would use it.

The legacy "linuxwacom" driver that would have support is only
compatible with X servers prior to 1.7, but such an old X server hasn't
been shipped with Linux distributions in ages. (If you're really
interested in knowing the version you have installed, you can generally
find it by looking in your Xorg.0.log -- possibly found in the /var/log
or ~/.local/share/xorg directories -- I have version 1.18, for instance).

The patch that you found almost certainly does not apply to the code any
more since there have been a great number of changes made in the past 5
years. I suppose it could be reworked, but we wouldn't be interested in
merging it since our X driver really shouldn't be in charge of serial
communications in the first place...

Instead, I would take a look at at [1], which has apparently provides a
driver (with patched `inputattach` daemon) for the old serial PenPartner
devices. If your system has version 3.17 of the Linux kernel or newer,
you shouldn't even need that driver since its apparently been accepted
upstream. With that driver in place, you should be able to simply run
something like `sudo inputattach --wacom_iv /dev/ttyS0` and have a new
input device under /dev/input/event* show up that the current version of
the X driver can use.

[1]: http://www.cipht.net/2011/07/02/wacom_serial-initial-release.html

Jason
---
Now instead of four in the eights place /
you’ve got three, ‘Cause you added one /
(That is to say, eight) to the two, /
But you can’t take seven from three, /
So you look at the sixty-fours....