Bionic Puppy 8.0 x64 Live CD, Frugal Install on Asus T100TA

[3guesses]

Just a quick post to report that the Bionic Puppy 8.0 x64 Live CD (on USB flash drive) and frugal install to built-in eMMC (using kernel 4.5.x from Buster x64*) boots successfully, and on preliminary investigation works to an extent on an Asus T100TA tablet/laptop transformer:

- The built-in eMMC is recognised (but not by the standard kernel*)
- The 2GB of RAM is recognised
- The built-in display works at 1368x768(?)
- The Intel Atom Z3740 (w/ 4 cores) is recognised
- The USB port is recognised
- The micro SD card reader is recognised
- The keyboard and touchpad on the dock work

What doesn't work:

- Sound doesn't work
- The wifi card is not recognised
- The battery is not recognised
- No sensors are recognised
- It is not possible to configure the toucpad on the dock (menu->Desktop->FlSynclient reports "Couldn't find synaptics properties. No synaptics driver loaded?")
- Pressing the power button does not bring up the shutdown/suspend dialogue

* It should also be noted that while it is straightforward to boot into the live CD (on USB flash drive) and then perform a frugal install to the built-in eMMC, it is not possible to boot that frugal install because the standard kernel does not appear to support the eMMC and so initrd can't find the Puppy .sfs file to load and run - for more info, see http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=117895.

[3guesses]

OK, so the wifi card on the Asus T100TA does not work in Bionic Puppy 8.0 x64, and I have done a little bit of investigation into this but so far without success.

I believe that it is a Broadcom card. After reading https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=226452, I downloaded the files brcmfmac43340-sdio.txt and then brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt from github using the following:

Code: Select all

wget https://github.com/Asus-T100/firmware/raw/master/brcm/brcmfmac43340-sdio.txt
wget https://github.com/Asus-T100/firmware/raw/master/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt

I then copied them into /lib/firmware/brcm and rebooted, but that didn't work. Note that the card doesn't work on antiX 19 either where I tried the same without success. Note also that on Puppy 8.0, "dmesg | grep brcm" returns nothing whereas it does on antiX 19.

[enrique]

I just came across this

Enable WiFi

/!\ Theses filenames are for T100TA and T100CHI only. Other T100's (T100TAF and 100H*) have other brcmfmac numbers. See the troubleshooting section No WiFi at the end of this document.

/!\ The filename ends with sdio.txt. Do not overwrite the file ending with sdio.bin.

cp /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-* /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt #useful now
cp /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-* /target/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt #useful after reboot
modprobe -r brcmfmac
modprobe brcmfmac

Now, you should be able to connect your ASUS T100 to your network.

[3guesses]

I just came across this

Enable WiFi

/!\ Theses filenames are for T100TA and T100CHI only. Other T100's (T100TAF and 100H*) have other brcmfmac numbers. See the troubleshooting section No WiFi at the end of this document.

/!\ The filename ends with sdio.txt. Do not overwrite the file ending with sdio.bin.

cp /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-* /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt #useful now
cp /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/nvram-* /target/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43241b4-sdio.txt #useful after reboot
modprobe -r brcmfmac
modprobe brcmfmac

Now, you should be able to connect your ASUS T100 to your network.

Thanks enrique, but unfortunately /sys/firmware/efi/efivars/ is empty...

Did you get that information from https://github.com/5bentz/linux-asus-t1 ... A_guide.md?

[enrique]

It does not look like, as I do not see the post. But it can be, I do not know. It was some time ago. I read your post. Then sometime later I was doing search on github. Google posted a link and I opened. So similar post as yours and about T100TA.