Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 10:35:56 -0400 From: Peter Radcliffe <pir@pir.net> To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Reflections on the Sony Vaio F709 (F590K ?) Message-ID: <20000822103555.C29067@pir.net> In-Reply-To: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>; from nik@freebsd.org on Tue, Aug 22, 2000 at 02:44:36PM %2B0100 References: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> probably said: > The 709 didn't have this partition when I received it. In addition, the > first time I booted it up (it had Windows pre-installed) it started up > PHDISK.EXE which informed me that it was prepping the suspend file. I > suspect that these machines now expect to be able to write to a file on > a FAT partition somewhere in order to successfully suspend. While this > does gain you back some disk space (on the order of whatever the maximum > physical memory you can install in to the machine), it means you can't > suspend to disk any more :-( Suspend to memory still works with no problems > however. Every vaio I've messed with, if it doesn't ship with a suspend to disk partition, you can use phdisk /partition /create (from memory) to create one, then /file /delete to remove the file in a FAT partition to get rid of the old one. Partition must be under 8Gb into the disk, so there must be space for it. > Related to this, I can no longer press Fn+F2 to get a display of the > remaining battery life. On the F270 this bought up a graphic display > showing the life remaining, and whether or not it was running off AC > power. That feature's now gone. > > I'm hypothesising, but I suspect Fn+F2 is now supposed to trigger the OS > to do it's own display. When I ran Windows on the F270 it intercepted > the request and put up its own graphical display instead. Yeah, they're slowly moving more crontrol out of the BIOS, which is a shame. I can do less and less from F keys, with newer vaios. > Secondly, the internal modem doesn't seem to work with FreeBSD. It's > probed (along with the regular serial port) with no problems, as > > sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0 > sio0: type 16550A > sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0 > sio2: configured irq 5 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0x404 > sio2 at port 0x3e8-0x3ef irq 5 on isa0 > sio2: type 16550A > sio3: configured irq 9 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0 > > and I can tip(1) to cuaa2. But if I type anything the machine freezes. Bizarre. I'd expect it to be a winmodem and just not show up. > The F270 didn't have an internal modem, so this wasn't a problem. I have > to hand a COM1 MC220 Modem Card, which has done sterling duty in the 270. > So I tried that instead. While it's detected by pccardd, it can't assign > a driver for it. So, for the time being, I'm using an external modem Sounds like you should mess with avaialb ememory space and irqs. > Speaking of BIOS options, I tried compiling in USB support in to the kernel. > One of the boot messages then said that "PNPOS" in the BIOS needed to be > set to 'OFF' for this to work properly. It then continued booting up > properly. So I rebooted, set PNPOS to off in the BIOS, and tried to > bring FreeBSD up. It hung just after the IDE disk probes. . . Are you booting 4.0 by any chance ? I had the same problem with 4.0, but 4.1-RC1 and 4.1-S have been fine. > And talking about hangs, "device pcm" works nicely in the F270, allowing > audio to work, MP3s to play (albeit they sound somewhat tinny). Not a > sausage on the F709. "device pcm" will cause the kernel to hang midway > through the boot. This is probably because the F709 uses a different > NeoMagic chipset to the one on the F270. The later vaios are mostly Yamaha chipset audio, which is supported in -STABLE now. Check under windows. > However, apart from those niggles, everything else works very nicely. > The additional 1" of screen real estate is very useful, as is the > increased speed and disk space. VMWare runs a treat on it, and Win98 is > only slightly slower in a VMWare window than I would expect it to be when > run natively. Cool. I've not managed to get VMWare running particularly fast on my PIII500/256Mb/12Gb Z505HS, but havn't really messed with it much. P. -- pir pir@pir.net pir@net.tufts.edu To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20000822103555.C29067>