Getting WiFi to work on my Sylvania Synet07526-R

[nedwar...@gmail.com]

Yesterday, I have decided to do another attempt of getting some form of Linux running without too many hickups and issues. So far here is what I got. I followed this guide [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lv2Nz7lMQjU and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uILC0rQWjg4&t=386s] which is in a nutsell just like this almos [https://cae2100.wordpress.com/2013/04/10/sylvania-netbook-debian-linux/]t. The link for Raspbian Softload (2013) as far as I know is dead. I found an alternative link however. [http://ftp.vim.org/pub/os/raspberrypi/images/debian/7/2013-05-29-wheezy-armel/] I didn't decide to expand the storage, but I set it up to boot to the desktop automatically. The kernel I used is the same shown on both guides and even this guide which I tried one time [http://projectproto.blogspot.com/2012/01/debian-wheezy-on-wm8505.html], but no proper networking support. Oddly enough, it found both the ethernet hardware and wireless hardware. Wireless could only be detected in iwconfig, by running a script. The only thing is that neither would actually worked. iwconfig claimed that it had set the settings, but when I checked on them, I found out they just went back to defaults and yes, I did look for a guide on this. I thought the kernel would have the drivers for the WiFi and it probably does. Back to Raspbian... I managed to hook this netbook up to ethernet and it seemed to connect automatically without a problem. As far as research is concerned iwconfig, ifconfig, etc should automatically detect the WiFi and let me connect via iwconfig, ifconfig, etc... I tried iwconfig and it found nothing, but something like, "lo." It found the ethernet which isn't a surprise now. I also tried the WPA_GUI program that it came with. It showed almost nothing. I read that someone had this problem and they had to use iwconfig. Like earlier iwconfig couldn't find said WiFi chip/hardware. I know WiFi works under Windows CE and Android and it has been tested. The only thing left I have that could help this is a wireless adapter that as far as I'm concerned only worked with Kano OS and modern versions of Raspbian based on Debian Jessie and higher this WiFi adapter is a generic WiFi adapter that came in a kit some years back. PS: I have tried many, many distros they have all gotten all sorts of weird problems and stuff. I would really appreciate the help.

This device:
Sylvania Synet07526-R (Red version)
Original operating system: Windows CE 6.0
Processor: WM8505
WiFi chip: ??? Some type of Ralink WiFi Chip or device I guess the 3070 that I read from another guide?

[Alexey Charkov]

All of these WonderMedia based devices by default start with the WiFi device powered down, so to get WiFi to work you typically need to change state of one of the GPIO pins (specific GPIO number differs by device, and some devices are active-high while others are active-low).

The sure way to find out what works for your device is to export all GPIOs 0 to 7 to sysfs, configure them as outputs and then toggle each one in turn to high then to low while watching what lsusb says.

The other way is to stock up enough hard liquor and try to understand the cryptic WonderMedia specific u-boot environment variables that the stock kernel uses to get that information, though there are few if any benefits in this approach.

Cheers,

Alexey

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[nedwar...@gmail.com]

Unfortunately I don't know how to list GPIO's on this thing what'soever.

[Alexey Charkov]

Have a look through this group’s archives, it’s been described more than a couple of times.

Also the sysfs gpio interface is a standard kernel thing, not specific to your device, so general docs apply too.

Hope this helps!

On Wed, 13 Jun 2018 at 05:04, <nedwar...@gmail.com> wrote:

Unfortunately I don't know how to list GPIO's on this thing what'soever.

[Nathan David]

I have a Linux Distro of Debian that doesn't seem to work right with connecting to WiFi or Ethernet however, it detects the wireless device and it can actually scan and see the networks.  I think the dependencies are broken in that distro.  I tried to make an SD with the same distro and even redownloaded it.  Wouldn't be possible to export all the GPIO settings from this distro and import the GPIO settings or what it is into the Raspbian Distro that I actually gotten to work with Ethernet?

[Alexey Charkov]

On Thu, 5 Jul 2018 at 21:58, Nathan David <nedwar...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a Linux Distro of Debian that doesn't seem to work right with connecting to WiFi or Ethernet however, it detects the wireless device and it can actually scan and see the networks.

Sounds like this distro you are mentioning has some sort of custom init script or similar that exports the correct GPIO and sets its value. You may try to find that under /etc/init.d/ (if the distro is not running systemd for its init)

I think the dependencies are broken in that distro.  I tried to make an SD with the same distro and even redownloaded it.  Wouldn't be possible to export all the GPIO settings from this distro and import the GPIO settings or what it is into the Raspbian Distro that I actually gotten to work with Ethernet?

Sure, though finding out what exactly that custom distro does may be time consuming. Or you can just play with /sys/class/gpio/export and friends, which should get you up and running in less than 10 minutes from scratch. There is more than one way to do it :)

Again, you may want to look through this group archives, as the necessary steps have been posted here more than once. Happy to help if you hit any issues when following those!

Cheers,

Alexey