Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2000 08:06:01 +0400 (MSD) From: "Vladimir B. Grebenschikov" <vova@express.ru> To: Nik Clayton <nik@FreeBSD.ORG> Cc: mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Reflections on the Sony Vaio F709 (F590K ?) Message-ID: <14755.19881.656392.318411@vbook.express.ru> In-Reply-To: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> References: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>
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Nik Clayton writes: > Overall it's a good solid machine, and it runs FreeBSD nicely. However, > there are a few niggles that prospective purchasers should be aware of. > FWIW, I'm running FreeBSD-current on it from about Thursday 17th August. > > First off, suspend to disk doesn't work. The F270 was great in this > respect. As shipped, it had a special partition at the end of the disk. > I didn't fiddle with this partition when I installed FreeBSD, and because > of this, I could suspend and resume to disk (or memory) until the cows > came home. I have same problem with my SONY VAIO Z505S > 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. But, whe I've asked in SONY support they say that PFDISK can configure both variant ov hybernation (suspend to disk) and send me instruction how to do this, If you need I can forward it to you. > 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. For me Fn+F2 works great (battary status), but volume control did not work > I can still use tools like apm(8), and various X battery monitors, so it's > no great loss. Yes, apm works but shows twice more time to work than real power in battary. > 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 it seems you see not modem, but IR-port I have sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 on isa0 sio0: type 16550A sio1 at port 0x2f8-0x2ff irq 3 on isa0 sio1: type 16550A But, I've changed IR-port IRQ in BIOS setup for match this. > and I can tip(1) to cuaa2. But if I type anything the machine freezes. > 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 > in sio0. Sadly, there's no option to disable the internal modem in the > BIOS, and disabling the internal serial port didn't make any difference. I have no problem with PCMCI port, but I've need to specify io 0x240-0x360 irq 3 10 11 memory 0xd0000 96k in pccard.conf > 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. . . for me USB support works too (FDD, Keyboard, Mouse) > 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. Sound for me works well too, but when I've upgraded to -current It brokes, so I have to roll back to -stable -- TSB Russian Express, Moscow Vladimir B. Grebenschikov, vova@express.ru To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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