Hi, I've got an old POS machine with a touchscreen that I would like to re-purpose (it would make a great jukebox with the touchscreen). It currently has Windows XP, but I think a newer OS would be good.

Question is, will linux be able to support the touchscreen? It might be a bit of a weird setup being POS. And which distribution would be best / most likely to support the drivers.

Also the processing power will be pretty low, I think it's Intel Celeron M 440 (1.86GHz), 512 MB ram.

Box is this - Toshiba ST-A20 15":
https://www.toshibatec.com/products_...ch_pos/st_a20/

I'm not very skilled on linux, but I do have Mint running on an old Dell box that I like.

Hello and welcome to LQ.

There used to be only two makers of touch screens. They'd either connect via serial or later by usb. Many were supported by linux as they were used in commercial settings. One problem that seemed to haunt users was the ability to calibrate.

It is easy to run a few live cd's and see what gives. I'd try Knoppix 3.4x or maybe 5x to start.

You could use a mouse and keyboard too while getting it running. Finding out about it helps. May have to look inside for clues.

Thanks jefro! Do you recommend the older versions of Knoppix to be a similar vintage to the hardware - version 5.x seems from around 2008. I don't have a CD so would need to boot from USB.

Seems the touchscreen is ELO as there are ELO drivers on the Win XP install. The interface I assume is serial, as the physical connector between the touchscreen monitor and the PC doesnt look like USB - perhaps 25 pin serial? It's about an inch and a half wide.

When I go on the ELO website it says it supports linux drivers, but only has packaged drivers for older versions, Ubuntu 8.04 and Fedora 8. Or Linux (4.x/3.x/2.6.x Kernel)(32-bit Intel, i686).
http://support.elotouch.com/download...d/default.aspx
http://support.elotouch.com/Forms/linux/default.aspx

The Toshiba device did come out in a linux version as well as windows, but it's not a free distribution .. SUSE Enterprise Desktop 10.

Pretty sure I've tested ELO long time ago. Used it on QNX forever. Some of the touchscreens in CRT also have jumpers in the crt to adjust baud and such. !!Electrocution warning!! Not only are you close to high voltage in that setting box, you are also able to implode the screen if you are not careful. Be sure know how to prevent issues safely before ever attempt to go into it.

If it is a LCD then almost 100% chance it is usb.

I suggest using Knoppix only for ease of use. I suspect it will boot. It also has tools to try to figure out what you have and can use. I keep two Knoppix in a dual cd case just for older systems. Use one or more versions. A few versions have problems with terminal server but that won't affect you on this.

Great, thanks. I've downloaded Knoppix 7 as it was easy to find, while I searched and finally managed to find 5.3.1.

5.3.1 is still downloading ... so while I waited I used Rufus to create a bootable usb. I tried Linux Mint iso, Knoppix 7, and even a dos version ... but I can't seem to be able to get the BIOS to read any of them. I have of course set the BIOS to preference USB over HDD in the startup menu.

When it boots is seems to just go to Windows off the HDD ... all it displays is:
Invalid boot.ini file
Booting from c:\Windows ...

The BIOS is Phoenix AwardBIOS v6.00 copyright 1984-2007. Is this a common problem with older motherboards, before USB became so ubiquitous?

An xp machine is unlikely to boot directly to a usb I'd think.

The usb choice tends to be usb cd or usb floppy or usb zip drive not a usb flash.

In most supported modern systems you move hard drive order from internal to usb and boot to hard drive.

In fact some systems you have to go to bios before the system will read the usb correctly.

The kernel has supported elo touchscreens for a while now. Above is a old post quote of mine.

http://rivendell.tryphon.org/wiki/EL...8debian/KDE%29
http://who-t.blogspot.com.au/2012/07...een-setup.html