Howto: Get your Gateway (Or Finepoint Pen) Working
 

Finally found some useful info on the Finepoint Innovations Tablet PC Digitizers. Most notably of late the Gateway cx series and M series tablet PC's seem to use almost exclusively these pens...

Step 1. Editing Xorg.conf

Add the following, you may need to play with the min and max numbers, but hopefully not. :)

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Tablet"
Driver "fpit"
Option "Device" "/dev/ttyS0"
Option "AlwaysCore" "on"
Option "InvertY"
Option "MaximumXPosition" "12550"
Option "MaximumYPosition" "7650"
Option "MinimumXPosition" "400"
Option "MinimumYPosition" "400"
Option "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

You also need to add InputDevice "Tablet" to the server layout section of your xorg.conf

Step 2.

You'll need the folllowing in your serial.conf or setserial.conf or whatever file your distro has to set up it's serial ports...

/dev/ttyS0 port 0x03F8 irq 4 baud_base 38400

Step 3. You'll need the source of latest fpit source code, and edit xf86Fpit.c and comment out the line which reads if (!prox) buttons=0;

Step 4. Put the following in your .xinitrc file, or make a .xinitrc file in your home directory and add this...

xsetpointer TOUCHSCREEN
xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 3 2"


My cx2618 tracks the pen but clicking is still broken. I hear an M280 and a cx2610 work fine, perhaps other models will be lucky with this method. :)

Ok, clicking works as well. For some reason even though the version I compile won't work just copying the driver from another user's distro works fine. :)

newbie in need
 

I am new to linux and need a little more direction. I am currently on a Gateway CX200X Tablet with dual boot XP and Suse 10.1. I found the Xorg.conf files and need to know which to edit and how to edit them. Possibly a more step by step instruction. Any help would be appreciated. The sooner the pen works the sooner windows leaves.

This was a problem I fought with for a while, but I have finally got it working.

Everything Caeda said is basically all that needs to be done. I kept having errors when trying to recomple the fpit drivers, though. There is a post on the Ubuntu forums about this, and a person there is offering the compiled module for download. Grab that, and things work.

One addition I might add, changing the driver from "i810" to "intel" seems to let you run at 1280x768 and suppors rotation. Still don't have the pen (or mouse) rotating as well, but thats another story.

...Step 3 isn't very clear. Where might I find the latest fpit source code? Google isn't being very helpful for a change.

There is a post over at the Ubuntu forums with some links to this. I had some troubles recompiling though. That post, on the Ubuntu forums, as a link where you can downloaded the updated drivers.

Update:
Rather pointless without a link the other forums, huh.
fpit driver download

The link to ubuntu forums is not for the source that most people would be using. The files posted there included a compiled driver for use on gentoo/ubuntu or systems that exactly match the way the computers on that forum are setup.

It was assumed (by me) that anyone attempting to follow these instructions was perfectly capable of going to the xorg website and downloading fpit which they DO provide for download.

http://xorg.freedesktop.org/releases/ is what you'd get if you just used google.

Oh, and also. The i810 driver supports rotation just fine. As well as direct rendering, as long as your using one of the newer versions of Xorg (you should be at 7.0 or above by now, no reason not to be.) to which these instructions apply. Do not change anything to "intel."

Using the intel driver in Fedora Core 6 opened up the native 1280x768 resolution. Going from 1024x768 to 1280 made for a much better expirence. Though, I'm sure there are ways of getting the higher res with the i810 driver, it was just easier for me this way :)

Did you get the pen to rotate with the tablet? My problem when using the i810 and rotation (same with the intel driver) is that when I rotate the screen, the pen doesn't "turn" with it. Up becomes Down, Down becomes Up, etc...

I just got a new Gateway tablet a couple days ago and have read this thread and the Ubuntu forum a few times but I can't seem to get a couple things to work. I think the tablet isn't working because when I try to cat /dev/ttyS0 it says "Input/Output error". I know I have serial support in my kernel, and I have the serial commands in /etc/serial.conf and my serial init script is running at boot, so I don't know what the problem would be. Also dmesg | grep tty doesn't display anything.

Also, KDE doesn't want to give me widescreen support with my intel card. I'm running Gentoo Linux with the very latest xf86-video-i810 driver. So any information or links or anything would be appreciated.

Which tablet? Are you sure it's a finepoint model?

It's a CX210X so based on what I've read it should be a Finepoint. And the driver may work, I'm not sure cause it doesn't get that far since catting /dev/ttyS0 gives me an input output error.

Hrm, you shouldnt get an input output error as long as you have that line in your serial.conf or as long as you've got it set to run at startup...

What happens if you run

/bin/setserial /dev/ttyS0 autoconfig
/bin/setserial /dev/ttyS0 port 0x03F8 irq 4 baud_base 38400

instead?

And are you sure you have acpi compiled loaded an enabled? You need it for the irq's to be set up properly.

That doesn't work either.
And .I have ACPI compiled and most of the ACPI stuff turned on, but I don't see why the stuff thats off should effect it.

Your getting the message I get when it's already configured. The "device busy" message. They may have changed the pen in your model. Or assigned a different IRQ.