September 29, 2003
At the request of Jeremiah here is the beginning of the Vaio Unix Guide for our AMD based Sony Vaio laptops. Please let me know if there are any additions or changes that need to be made.
Other Sites with 'Nix information for the AMD based Vaio.
For detailed information on installing SuSe Linux check out Markus' web page @ http://www.gaugusch.at/vaio . Lots of great detailed information here.
André van Dijk has another site with info on installing Mandrake and SuSe Linux on an FX301 http://www.unseen.demon.nl/linux/vaio.html.
Brian Litzinger has a site with additional Linux related content as well as some additional hardware related notes. http://www.litzinger.com/fxa32.html
For general laptop Linux info see Linux on Laptop. (Thanks Peter)
Modem (FCC numbers and stuff)
September 28, 2003. Lamar Owen report that http://www.linuxant.com has a modem driver for sale.
The modem drivers from linuxant.com are no longer free, but cost $14.95.
This buys a much better modem driver, apparently.September 30, 2002. Warren provides this link to 'nix modem drivers for the modem in these laptops
http://www.mbsi.ca/cnxtlindrv/
April 20, 2002
Steve Romero has dug up some more useful information regarding the WinModem in our laptops. It seems that a large part of the problem is related to the fact that the WinModem is not a PCI based WinModem but an AMR (Audio Modem Riser) based WinModem. For a full explanation click here.
March 16, 2002
I have found some detailed information on Conexant's web site that may be useful in getting a 'Nix modem driver working for this modem.
Here is another interesting tidbit from Conexant's FAQ page for WinModems.
Do you have any drivers for Linux?
HSF Generic Modem Drivers for Linux, have been placed on the modem driver assistance download page. HCF Generic Drivers are scheduled to be ready May 2002.From the research that I have done, it seems the modem is an HSF modem. If anyone has any data to disprove this I am interested in seeing it.
"Thanatos" has found a How-To guide that might be useful in configuring this modem under 'Nix.
Old Stuff
Potential modem driver for the built in "Conexant-Ambit Soft56K (WinModem) Data, Fax" WinModem. This link was provided to me by a mystery person, Thank you. The Link does work I have downloaded the file the link points to.
Touchpad/Mouse
added March 11, 2002
Ben from the Yahoo Forum found this link to a great driver for the Alps Touchpad on our Vaio Laptops. Linux tpconfig Touchpad Driver
Kernel
Fedora
Lamar Owen reports
The new Fedora Core 0.94 installs very well on the FXA-49. LAN works, LCD
works, CD/RW works, etc. ACPI is available in this release by adding
'acpi=on' to the kernel command line; there is still work to do in this area,
as Warren Togami can attest. It was a very simple install. One note: Fedora
Core is in beta right now: there are issues in it that are not FAX-49
related.
FreeBSD
(Jeremiah says) I am including the matching Sony Vaio Wireless NIC in this guide, because I purchased it with my laptop, as I'm sure a few others did.
FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE Kernel Config for Vaio FX-210/215
http://dualcpus.com/fx210/freebsd/kernelRedHat:
The system will panic due to the (stupid) Athlon optimizations in the RH
7.2 version of the Linux kernel.
Fix:
Add 'noathlon' to this line:
"kernel /boot/lmlinuz-2.*.*-* ro root=/dev/hda1 noathlon"
This will have do be done in the boot loader (either GRUB or LILO) the
very next boot after installation. After the first successful boot, you can
edit /etc/grub.conf or /etc/lilo.conf to include the noathlon flag.
Redhat suggests installing an updated version of the kernel to solve the
problem.Erik provides the following insight into the RedHat Athlon optimization problem.
"Linux pushes hardware to its limits (it has always done that). In this particular case, it pushes the CPU bandwidth. Linux uses a couple of CPU specific optimisations for moving blocks of memory around. If they work, it generally speeds up the kernel by using all available CPU bandwidth. The optimisations are completely within the specs of the CPU as published by AMD, but still the kernel crashes on it simply because the hardware is broken.
Some motherboard vendors made mistakes in the routing of the signal lines between the CPU and the chipset which caused data corruption at very high CPU bandwidth. That data corruption is exactly why Linux crashes. Why don't other OSes crash? Simply because no other OS uses the CPU specific optimisations Linux does. The old Linux-2.4 kernels had a workaround with the "noathlon" boot option, the new 2.4 kernels try to detect and work around broken motherboards. In case that detection doesn't work the "noathlon" option can still be used to be able to run the kernel."
FreeBSD 4.4-STABLE XFree86 Config
http://dualcpus.com/fx210/freebsd/xfree
Network
FreeBSD
Problem A:
Sony Wireless NIC not recognized (but is supported).
Fix:
Update to 4.5-RELEASE, or add this to your /etc/defaults/pccard.conf
card "Sony Corporation" "PCWA-C100"
config auto "wi" ?
insert /etc/pccard_ether $device start
remove /etc/pccard_ether $device stop
RedHat 7.l
Problem A:Realtek Ethernet card not supported or is it.
Jon Mckeown Reports on his RH7.1 installI have found that the built in Realtek Ethernet card is supported and it seems to be working perfectly for me. (I haven't upgraded the kernel) .
I am not sure what to say about the Realtek support. If someone installs RH7.1 let me know if you have any trouble with the Ethernet support.
Hard Drive Controller Freeze
RedHat 8.0
Warren T reports on the cause and solution for the Hard Drive Controller Freeze
Hard Drive Controller reboot freeze https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=62295 This problem was found to affect many other Athlon laptops too. arjanv@redhat.com figured out that local APIC uniprocessor support in the Linux kernel seems to be causing this problem upon reboot, so if you disable that option then your kernel should work fine with mobile Athlon processors and avoid this problem. This is default in the athlon kernel of Red Hat 8.0, but unfortunately it will still freeze after installation because that uses the generic installer kernel which needs local APIC enabled to workaround some Intel motherboard bug. That's okay... only a minor problem with the end of the installer.
RedHat 7.2
April 20, 2002
Steve Romero has uncovered a solution for this problem. The solution involves activating ACPI support in RedHat. This solution has a side benefit of improving battery life under Linux too. Click here for the solution.
April 6, 2002
Warren has a different solution to the problem. Warren suggests installing the i686 kernel rather than the Athlon kernel from Red Hat updates. This solution worked for him.
Original problem
The VAIO's hard drive controller will be frozen after you reboot from RH
7.2 Linux. Something in the ata driver in Linux is causing the ATA
controller to freeze when the BIOS attempts to init after a reboot from
Linux.
I have not been able to find any pages related to this problem, nor any
solutions.
Fix:
Hold down the power button for 4 seconds to turn the laptop off. Power
up the laptop, and press F1 at the BIOS's failed boot prompt.
OR
To save time, just halt the laptop and shut it down. Power the laptop
back up and it will work.
