What would it take to get my laptop's stylus working under Haiku?

Feedback Hardware
1

Howdy,

I have a Gateway M275, which has a stylus and a Wacom tablet integrated into the screen (one of those “2-in-1” laptops from back before “2-in-1” was cool). The stylus works under Linux (last tested under Slackware 14.1), but it does not under Haiku (currently running x86_gcc2 Nightly, rev. hrev50897), or at least doesn’t seem to do anything on the screen (like moving my mouse cursor). However, I can tell it’s working on some level because if I open SerialConnect and connect to pc_serial0, it does at least fill the SerialConnect window with all sorts of gibberish whenever I do something with the stylus on the screen (move around, tap, drag, press the button on the side of the stylus, etc.).

So I’m guessing there’s some missing piece between the actual serial connection and actually behaving like an input device. Any pointers on what that might be? Is it as simple as (re)compiling and/or (re)installing some driver? Or am I misinterpreting the significance of the serial input?

Already pretty happy with Haiku on this machine (it’s surprisingly snappy and capable); having a working stylus is certainly not a deal-breaker, but would certainly be the icing on the proverbial cake.

2

Only USB is supported for some Wacom tablets.
There is an input server add-on for the Easypen serial tablet here: http://cgit.haiku-os.org/haiku/tree/src/add-ons/input_server/devices/easypen.

3

We would need to know which protocol the pen input is using. It may be Easypen, or some derivation on the “serial mouse” protocol, or something else.
At least it seems to be using a serial port, which means we can do most things in an input_server add-on, and don’t need to write a low level driver for it. If we can figure out the protocol, adding a driver for it should not be too hard.

4

Thanks for the quick responses!

I think it uses a protocol called “ISDV4”, per this forum thread regarding getting it to work on Linux w/ X. The LinuxWacom project has some documentation regarding it. I don’t know if this is the same as the EasyPen protocol (I doubt it, but I ain’t exactly an expert here).

5

… sorry to »interrupt« the thread, but is there any haiku-compatible laptop with pen outthere? back in the days there a some ibm, siemens etc., but never heard from one of it, working with haiku or beos?