Does Anyone Have a Working Linux Setup For The Sylvania SYNET07526 (8505-Based) Smartbook?

[Matt Edwards]

Hi folks,

Please let me know if I am posting this thread to the wrong forum.  I have done some intermittent searching of the web over the past couple of years, and found that groups focused on getting Linux working on WonderMedia Smartbooks appear to be very few and far between.

I have read every posting that I can find on this topic, and I have gotten a few old kernels to work with very limited usefulness.  What I have been trying to find is a setup for my 8505-based Smartbook that is using a more recent kernel and filesystem that might make my Smartbook useful as a general-purpose device.  I know that the device has limitations from a hardware perspective, which is fine, but it would be great to be able to use the built-in wifi card and have the default brightness set to something just short of pitch black.  :P

I have found a handful of postings where people have compiled their own kernels, but unfortunately I have no idea how to do that, and I'm having a great deal of trouble finding any kind of online guide that might walk a complete newbie through the process.

Would any of you folks happen to have a working setup on an 8505-based Smartbook?  If so, would you be willing to share your setup with me?

Any help would be very much appreciated.  I really love the form factor of this device... now I could just use it.  :P

Take care.


Matt Edwards

[Roman Volkov]

Hi Matt,

The kernel 4.1 is working fine for purposes you described - various USB devices are working, including the internal WiFi. Also the clocksource issue should be fixed soon in the latest stable kernels, 4.2 and later versions should work. Usually we have following steps to build the mainline (assume you have Archlinux with crosscompiler which you can install using pacman and uboot-tools):

cd linux-x.y.z
export ARCH=arm
export CROSS_COMPILE=arm-none-eabi-
export INSTALL_MOD_PATH=./modules
make oldconfig
make
make modules_install
cat arch/arm/boot/zImage arch/arm/boot/dts/wm8505-ref.dtb > dtImage
mkimage -A arm -O linux -T kernel -C none -a 0x8000 -e 0x8000 -n "Linux-x.y.z" -d dtImage uImage

You will have to edit the DTS file to adjust the display brightness, and maybe do other tricks to get it working. If you need sound, you may use the legacy kernel (it does not even support systemd).

I have these instructions in Russian on my website v1ron.ru with precompiled kernels. You may try google translate :)

Roman

[lrussell887]

Hello,

I tried to use the 'Wm8505 Projectgus Firmware v2' download on your website, and while it tries to boot something odd occurs.

On my SD card I have two partitions, a 64MB FAT16 for boot and the rest as EXT4 for the operating system.

For boot, I used a previously working 'scriptcmd' since I couldn't find one on your website. I replaced the 'uImage' with the one located in the 'vt1602' folder of your download.

The root partition contains the contents of the folder 'ba649e95-167e-47ec-9bdf-dd69c9e486dd', found inside of 'rootfs-armv5-debian2.tar.xz'.

The problem seems to occur when the 'WonderMedia HW decoder driver' loads, noting the strange pixels near the top of the screen in my attached image. It just sits there afterward, with no change. The contents of my boot partition is also attached if that's any help, I'm just not sure where to go from here.

Thanks!

[Roman Volkov]

Hello,

It is an old issue with these 'dirty' kernels. You likely missed a 'mem=109M' argument in your scriptcmd and the kernel wrote its data at the video buffer area. You may find an example of scriptcmd by 'mem=109' keyword on the website or Google.

[lrussell887]

Hi,

That seems to have fixed it, although I realized too late it was the old 2.6 Kernel and Debian Squeeze. I found the pre-compiled modern kernel, and while it seems to boot the screen is awfully dark and the on-board keyboard doesn't function. I could run it as a headless server of sorts, but then I would like to turn the screen off completely as not to ruin it (including back-light). That's something I haven't found out how to do yet. Would it be possible to debootstrap a modern armel Jessie system and run it atop the old 2.6 kernel, or is it simply too old?

Thank you!

[Ivan Krylov]

lrussell887 wrote:
> Would it be possible to debootstrap a modern armel Jessie system and run
> it atop the old 2.6 kernel, or is it simply too old?

According to
<https://www.debian.org/releases/stable/armel/release-notes/ch-information.en.html#required-kernel-config-options>,
the old kernel needs at least CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y to run Jessie and some
other options if one intends to use systemd with it.

--
Best regards,
Ivan

[Alexey Charkov]

2016-01-25 23:54 GMT+03:00 lrussell887 <lruss...@gmail.com>:
> Hi,
>
> That seems to have fixed it, although I realized too late it was the old 2.6
> Kernel and Debian Squeeze. I found the pre-compiled modern kernel, and while
> it seems to boot the screen is awfully dark and the on-board keyboard
> doesn't function.

For the built-in keyboard and touchpad on 8500/8505/8510 you'll need
the i8042 Device Tree patch which you can extract from github:

https://github.com/linux-wmt/linux-vtwm/commit/3f9af107bfe79cb2b18c4046c01b498b9cba27ed

Screen backlight can be adjusted via sysfs (there's a standard PWM
brightness control if the driver is compiled in).

In case you still observe very dim screen even at high brightness
levels, try setting contrast to 0x80 (i.e. 127 decimal) in the
framebuffer driver's sysfs 'contrast' knob.

Cheers,
Alexey