Linux Tablet?

Axios

The last info you provided was very helpful I can see maybe whats happening but at this point
I cant say why.
So Many variables to Linux hard keep them straight sometimes at least for me.
I got get back to R/L for awhile was under weather so had sometime to kill.
Only other thing I can suggest maybe try distros till one works (Not my first choice and time consuming)
Agree with what you said and its hard when manufactures cut corners they cause problems like this.

Kinda like my asus tab it had such uncommon camera there was no way period to make it work and I dont write
software anyways for what it was wasnt worth the effort.
Am at point got clear my mind..lol

BuzzPCSOS

Axios good call. It has 4Gb of ram and is x64 so I can afford to mix it up a bit. Might try Ubuntu and Mint and see if I get lucky. I chose Manjero because four years ago most stuff worked on that. Everything changes I guess.
Again many thanks for your help and support. Really appreciated.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Oh I forgot (One last thing) I know the commands for eopkg and dpkg to list installed packages for certain
things lets say (broadcom) or (intel) and it will show those.
But not having much luck with pacman but they do have a (pacman log viewer app)
not sure it will do it think it will.
Below is kinda what I am looking for show all installed for broadcom.

No big hurry just curious

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Not sure but I think Pacman has been depreciated in favour of Pamac, anyhow here is the broadcom software list.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Thanks

I ran across this (NOT GOING SAY ITS A GOOD IDEA OR BAD) but we all know what can happen
(bricked computer) Leave that choice to you.
Downloaded file and took gander at it there is a readme.
What he talks about is quite interesting. (And I think we prob already knew some of it)
https://www.css-networks.com/2020/09/linx-12x64-tablet-pc-cameras-not-working-bios-settings-kaput-etc/

I think if I did it and it worked I would start fresh manjaro or whatever (without those added wifi drivers) and
see what happens.
(Just info) would check your current bios date

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Good call!! Already found the bios update and checked that I was on the the last revision released by Linx.
When you boot into the bios the touchscreen is not functional and the usual key presses are not available to choose your boot media so a USB hub, keyboard and mouse are required to install anything. Worse than that - if the drive is wiped (all 64Gb of it) Windows will not be able to find drivers for WiFi, battery state and about half a dozen other essentials from a clean install. I think some owners thought the fix might be to return the bios to default values. Bad move, the stock bios was a wide open generic bit of code with hundreds of potentially lethal combinations.
Linx eventually updated the bios to fix all of that stuff and supposedly improve the WiFi performance.
When you clean install into Windows it is still mostly broken unless you have access to the specific drivers published by Linx. I managed to get most things working but could not make battery status load. Even then Windows 10 on a 64Gb hard drive left very little room to do anything else with and any updates were mostly not installable without serious pruning and data offloading. Basically a tablet ideally suited to a Linux system.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I dug around and charged my asus earlier
and I have no comment..lol
It uses BCM43241 WLAN card so much is famialar with what you posted about yours.
Have you ever tried this
#unload brcmfmac
modprobe -r brcmfmac
#reload brcmfmac
modprobe brcmfmac
will see if something jumps out lotta crap to look at..
Oh its fedora and am posting with it

Mine shows up as a usb device even tho its sdio interesting

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Not much happened, or did I miss something?

Pretty sure I removed the original drivers that I tried which may/may not make a difference.
I have downloaded the latest desktop version of Ubuntu today and got it all written to a stick. I will try a live run on that tomorrow when I have access to a USB hub, keyboard and mouse. I will see where I go from there and what works and what doesn't. Now I know what to look for I might just find a distro that has it all straight out of the box.

BuzzPCSOS

Ubuntu and Mint were a bit of a disappointment on the Linx, WiFi was not working, touchscreen was not directly available and various other features did not work. I am sure all this could be made to work but fiddling about with a keyboard, memory stick, WiFi adapter, mouse and a USB hub all running out of one USB port is slow and unreliable.
I have a suspicion that the wireless broke with kernel updates as earlier versions all boasted some level of connectivity which broke after updating.
Everything works very well (but slowly) from a fresh install of Manjero apart from the wireless which works nicely on a faster USB dongle so could be thought of as an upgrade.
I have fresh installed Manjero because I was beginning to loose track of what was really broken and what had been broken due to overzealous tweaking.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Found this might be worth checking
That should be all that is needed to get SDIO working. Linux will automatically poll the SDIO port once every second. Any devices that enumerate will appear in the sysfs folder /sys/bus/sdio. Provided Linux has the correct driver, and the driver has a compatibility string that matches the vendor and device IDs in /sys/bus/sdio, everything should Just Work.
Might let us know if its seeing the wifi correctly
I havent looked on my asus to see what it has.

WetGeek

BuzzPCSOS

I routinely use Bluetooth to operate my Samsung phone. I have a mouse and keyboard that pair with three different devices, so #1 is my laptop, #2 is the TV streaming computer across the living room, and #3 is my smartphone, on a stand in front of my chair. I only use its USB-C port for charging.

Is there any chance that Bluetooth could help simplify your problems with multiple USB devices?

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Inside the/sys/bus/sdio are 3 files and two folders.
drivers_autoprobe is empty, drivers_probe and uevent are locked but also appear to be empty.
The devices folder has three sub folders marked mmc1:001:# the contents looks like dummy files to me.
The drivers folder has two sub folders brcmfmac and btsdio. The btsdio folder has what looks like 3 empty dummy files in it. The brcmfmac folder contains a module folder which looks like it contains a lot.
What am I looking for here?

BuzzPCSOS

WetGeek I already use a Bluetooth mouse and am looking at various options for Bluetooth keyboards. Unfortunately external drives are where my heaviest external traffic is,
Also my tablet does not work with Bluetooth at bios level which is where I would want the most connections to peripherals.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Ah ok it works like posted earlier looks like its not enumerating properly
so kernel or driver
Here is mine you got have the mmc folders the mmc in the driver folders will have alot in it (its the second screen shot)
if you dont have it wont work

Once its creating the mmc stuff properly it should work
Will press on later. (No Worries I love this stuff gives me something to do)
It enumerates the device first then the driver from what you said its seeing the device let me know what the driver folder
looks likes the mmc
If it turns out not looking like that its a driver issue but gives you a point of reference when trying drivers which is a big step in telling if stuff is loading properly.

WetGeek

BuzzPCSOS am looking at various options for Bluetooth keyboards

If you'll pardon a suggestion, look for the Artech brand of keyboards. I use their compact (no numpad) version that pairs with three devices, and costs less than $20 US on Amazon. They last for years, and allow me to type as easily as on a high-quality laptop.

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Thanks. My /sys/bus/sdio/drivers/brcmfmac folder does not have any of the mmc0:0001:# folders in it that you have.
At the moment I am running a fresh install without any additional drivers loaded for the WiFi so the no drivers theory certainly makes sense.
These drivers let me 'see' nearby networks but would not let me connect when I entered a WiFi password. Possibly some experimenting here could be worth a try.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS I would try it like this since this guy got it to work (Dunno if you have) I know you got those drivers. (If anything do a fresh install dont mess with anything and install drivers directly before anything else)
1 download wifi drivers on usb and extrac
2 install manjaro (dont plug usb wifi in )(dont want it plugged in to confuse things it shouldnt but who knows at this point)
3 install the drivers from step 1 (use his commands since they worked)
4 see if it works
5 If it wrote that stuff doesnt work we have dig little deeper

Just at this point kinda how I see it
(Just some info)

BuzzPCSOS

Axios well seeing as I have just installed from scratch I did not fancy starting again just yet.
So I ran the live environment instead and patched it with the brazen winter drivers. WiFi worked and all the local networks showed up but as soon as I tried to connect by entering a password I just got "Incorrect password for network ### please try again"
I know it's not a miss type because I can peek at password entered. Also same password works if I use it with a USB WiFi dongle.
So close and yet so far away.
I am pretty sure that the driver is right but there is another part not making the right connection, maybe because of a five years newer kernel. That's a long time in computer years.
Edit: Could this just be some other generic broadcom drivers getting in the way? I wonder if an install driver, uninstall driver, install driver sequence might clear the way to make the provided driver work properly. I remember there was a modprobe command to uninstall a specific driver. Might be worth a try seeing as with a live system boot I have an indefinitely resettable OS to experiment with.

Axios

BuzzPCSOS Delete the brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt
and sudo modprobe -r brcmfmac && sudo modprobe brcmfmac
Then see if it works
Did those entries show up in the directory?

Then if that didnt work try
cat /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-74b00bd9-805a-4d61-b51f-43268123d113 > /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt
and sudo modprobe -r brcmfmac && sudo modprobe brcmfmac

BuzzPCSOS

Axios Very late for me now, going to try this tomorrow.
So from a clean boot into live environment, do I need to install all parts of the driver including the brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt part and then delete it again or can I just avoid installing the brcmfmac43455-sdio.txt file in the first place?

Axios

BuzzPCSOS install the other 2 files leave that .txt out and try it and also the second part to if that dont work.
After researching Not sure if its even needed
The second example is taking the sys eufi nvram and copying to broadcom (From what I call tell my system is using
the eufi nvram)

This is just info I watched a video today she didnt really go into how she installed it but she had (Nobara)
running on a linx12x64 dont know if thats another avenue I dont know anything about it.
Just thought I would mention it

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