A bit more fiddling with the Toughpad today, I notice it has a WWAN module.
During boot-up, an Ericsson F5521gw quickly shows itself and enumerates a network device and some serial ports (CDC ACM).
But then, 5 seconds later, it deregisters itself. Quite why, I have no idea.
Now this is a 3G era card, so in Australia, is about as useful as a screen door on a submarine for Internet access… HOWEVER, it does provide a GPS module.
Now that *would* be handy.
https://sven-seeberg.de/wp/?p=614 and https://www.tjansson.dk/2009/01/using-the-builtin-gps-in-a-thinkpad-x200-under-linux/ suggest it can be done…
The problem is figuring out what makes it suddenly disappear. That second article points out a SIM card being needed, so I grab the old 3G era SIM from my old ZTE T83 phone, power the tablet off, stuff it in the SIM card slot, and power it back up.
No dice. It again says peek-a-boo, enumerating then disappearing.
I didn't keep the Windows 8.1 install, so I can't boot that to have another look.
For now, I've just turned it off in the UEFI BIOS. At least it's not drawing unnecessary power … but if anyone has any ideas as to what I can shoot that might be telling the 3G module to disappear… I'm all ears.
