OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Hardware
Mouse, Trackpoint, Trackpad, Touchpad - I2C Question
Martin Iturbide:
Hello
At Warpstock I was talking to Lewis about ArcaOS mouse support, and how annoying is the issus that we love the trackpoint, but the trackpad (touchpad) is a problem to us because we don't have the "Ignore Palm rest" feature that the Thinkpad utilities support. Yes, we can disable the trackpad if it is available on the BIOS, but I said that it will be more elegant to have a way to disable with software (like in other platforms).
Lewis talk about that the Trackpoint and Trackpad is connected via I2C and that I may open a ticket to see if AMouse may support to disable the trackpad in the future.
But I want to know more about I2C. (I guess is this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C )
- Is there a way to list (just like pci.exe or lsusb.exe) the devices that are plugged in I2C ? Under OS/2, or even Windows.
I would like to know if there is a way to recognize which chipset is installed on my machine and see which models are the most common for us.
Regards
Mentore:
--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on October 27, 2024, 12:15:16 am ---Hello
At Warpstock I was talking to Lewis about ArcaOS mouse support, and how annoying is the issus that we love the trackpoint, but the trackpad (touchpad) is a problem to us because we don't have the "Ignore Palm rest" feature that the Thinkpad utilities support. Yes, we can disable the trackpad if it is available on the BIOS, but I said that it will be more elegant to have a way to disable with software (like in other platforms).
Lewis talk about that the Trackpoint and Trackpad is connected via I2C and that I may open a ticket to see if AMouse may support to disable the trackpad in the future.
But I want to know more about I2C. (I guess is this one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C )
- Is there a way to list (just like pci.exe or lsusb.exe) the devices that are plugged in I2C ? Under OS/2, or even Windows.
I would like to know if there is a way to recognize which chipset is installed on my machine and see which models are the most common for us.
Regards
--- End quote ---
Hi Martin,
I found this for now:
https://github.com/mozilla-b2g/i2c-tools/blob/master/tools/i2cdetect.c
Since this uses the linux kernel, it may be impossible even to compile it under OS/2.
Let me take a look later in the morning (here in Italy it's 8.18 AM).
Mentore
- Update -
As I thought, no results.
All projects use some special Linux OS driver, so I can't even start compiling.
Mentore
Martin Iturbide:
Thanks Mentore for taking a look at it.
I feel ashamed of myself that I just found out that I2C exists and the wikipedia page says it is from 1982.
Why I want to know more about I2C and be able to take some kind of hardware report from it? I would like to see if just like pci.exe we can recognize the several trackpoint/trackpad brands/moedls like Synaptics, Elan or ALPS that we usually have on Thinkpads.
Regards
Mentore:
--- Quote from: Martin Iturbide on October 29, 2024, 03:18:05 pm ---Thanks Mentore for taking a look at it.
I feel ashamed of myself that I just found out that I2C exists and the wikipedia page says it is from 1982.
Why I want to know more about I2C and be able to take some kind of hardware report from it? I would like to see if just like pci.exe we can recognize the several trackpoint/trackpad brands/moedls like Synaptics, Elan or ALPS that we usually have on Thinkpads.
Regards
--- End quote ---
This is indeed interesting because I2C is a nasty little creature lying and working under the hood. I really am not sure if there's something under OS/2 able to directly work on it, even as a bunch of IOCTLs (I am rather sure it needs a ring 0 driver).
Hobbes archive contains basically 0 elements, the same goes for eCSoft/2 so I'm afraid we're in the same situation of the bluetooth stack. Sad but we get to work with what we have available.
Mentore
Andi B.:
I²C is a Philips Inter IC Bus invented decades ago. But it was not used in PC at the beginning. At least not at OS (not even DOS) level. Beside that a lot of ICs are talk I²C and so some of them are used in some motherboards too. Temperature sensors f.i. Said that, I think you should not concentrate on a bus or the bus protocol (I²C), you wanna support for a specific device. I²C can address more then 100 different device addresses on the same bus. Moreover each one speaks a specific control set (registers) which you have to know how to program and read.
What I wanna say is you don't need to understand (program) I²C only, you need the exact register settings of the specific devices. Let's say you need a device driver for your specific touch. But you also need to find a way how YOUR Bios is able to talk to this device. There are no standardizes ways in PC (BIOS) to talk to I²C devices (AFAIK). You have to find out where is the I²C bus master integrated in your Notebook. Is it in the south bridge or the north bridge (no clue if this even exists in new PCs) or if there is on connected via USB hub, or via the legacy (ISA) interface which seem to exist even in new processor designs although most of them do not make ISA available as a socket?
That said, I've designed in and programmed numerous I²C devices outside PCs. I also programmed them with PCs via parallel port and with own build in PC ISA cards. But I don't know how some specific sensors or other devices in notebooks are connected to the PC hardware. Nor did I ever saw standard BIOS calls to support something like that.
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