bay-trail tablet battery&power supply problems.

[jan]

Hi,

i'm running debian 10 x64 on a Archos bay-trail tablet pc.

i managed to get most hardware working and the device works very good, its really snappy for a 70€ intel tablet(back in the days).

the only problem is the battery and powersupply not showing up and i'm running out of battery without knowing. i'm currently running 5.6 kernel and tested a couple of things but nothing works.
the devices charges via a usb micro port.

there is nothing in the /sys/class/power_supply, and no battery found in /sys/class/

• -lshw gives me this... :
  
  *-battery
  description: Lithium Ion Battery
  product: SR Real Battery
  vendor: Intel SR 1
  physical id: 1
  version: Date
  serial: 123456789
  slot: I2C2
  configuration: voltage=3.8V
  *-power UNCLAIMED
  description: OEM_Define1
  product: OEM_Define5
  vendor: OEM_Define2
  physical id: 2
  version: OEM_Define6
  serial: OEM_Define3
  capacity: 42mWh

so i tried to use i2cdump to show more about. the i2c-2 interface

• sudo i2cdetect -l
  
  i2c-3 i2c Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter I2C adapter
  i2c-10 i2c i915 gmbus dpd I2C adapter
  i2c-1 i2c Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter I2C adapter
  i2c-8 i2c i915 gmbus dpc I2C adapter
  i2c-6 i2c i915 gmbus vga I2C adapter
  i2c-4 i2c Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter I2C adapter
  i2c-11 i2c DPDDC-B I2C adapter
  i2c-2 i2c Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter I2C adapter
  i2c-0 i2c Synopsys DesignWare I2C adapter I2C adapter
  i2c-9 i2c i915 gmbus dpb I2C adapter
  i2c-7 i2c i915 gmbus panel I2C adapter
  i2c-5 i2c i915 gmbus ssc I2C adapter
  i2c-12 i2c DPDDC-C I2C adapter
  
  sudo i2cdump -y 2 0x0b
  
  No size specified (using byte-data access)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 a b c d e f 0123456789abcdef
  00: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  10: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  20: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  30: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  40: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  50: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  60: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  70: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  80: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  90: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  a0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  b0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  c0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  d0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  e0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
  f0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

current kernel(backports):

Debian 5.6.14-2~bpo10+1 (2020-06-09) x86_64



any help or tips are welcome i'm stuck for a couple of days trying to figure this out.

regards Jan

[pylkko]

only thing that comes to mind is that the hardware might be supported in later kernels. there is no guarantee, of course, but you should try 5.8 and 5.9

[jan]

hi thx for the reply. i will test a couple a new kernels. i have found some articles about this type of battery/power-controller, its also found in some other tablet like Lenovo but with usb-c, mine has usb-b micro.

[cuckooflew]

the only problem is the battery and powersupply not showing up and i'm running out of battery without knowing.

For just the battery, try : https://packages.debian.org/buster/xbattbar

Display battery status in X11

Xbattbar displays the current (laptop) battery status in the X window environment. Battery status is obtained through the APM interface.

The battery indicator of this program is very simple: a simple bar at the top/bottom of your display. With its color, it indicates the AC-line status (plugged in or off-line), and battery charging/remaining level. Also, if the mouse cursor enters the indicator window, a popup diagnosis window comes up in the center of your display showing the current AC line status and battery level.

This package supports ACPI and APM checks for battery status.

You start in from a CLI terminal, on Unix/BSD systems 'Xbatt' but on Debian maybe 'Xbattbar' will be needed.

[pylkko]

May be of interest:

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1791098

In your i2c read, I believe you need to first set up the read before you read (write some registers to set up the communication on the bus), by sending the bytes addresses and read. At least microcontrollers discussing with peripherals over i2c-related protocols, there are separate commands that setup the read, then you read and get back a value that you should be able to interpret if you have the manual

[jan]

thx cuckooflew for the idea but the problem is hardware/driver related.


thx pylkko i have been trying to do some more I2c tests but its not working out for me, i installed latest kernel (5.7) but it does not fix the battery problem.
cpu throttling works better with the lastet kernel.