The first author previously owned an NEC Versa 2730MT, which weighed over 7 pounds. He hardly took it anywhere because it was too heavy; the VAIO is small enough that he carries it with him often, which results in it being used much more. The small keyboard and screen takes some time to get used to.
We were both pleased with CDW's service. However, our laptops appeared to be DOA! The solution is to plug the laptop in for approximately 20 minutes to charge the internal battery so that the machine will boot up. Our machines would not turn on before charging the internal battery for a few minutes!
"I" in the description below refers to
William, and
all email enquiries should be directed to
[email protected].
Please do not send me Microsoft Windows related questions,
as I don't know anything about Microsoft Windows.
Bruce Forsberg ([email protected])
provided the following information about sound configuration.
The Sony VAIO PCG-505TR uses the ESS-1879 chip set. This chip set
was not supported until kernel 2.2.11. If you are using an earlier
version then you will most likely need to use the OSS sound software.
Otherwise upgrade your kernel to 2.2.12 (this has some bug fixes). I had
to do this since I use SUSE 6.2 which is based on the 2.2.10 kernel.
Once this is done, then the 100% Soundblaster Compatible entry in the
kernel should work.
There is a bug in the kernel for the ESS-1879 sound chip that I
have found. This problem occurs when booting into Linux from Windows
without powering down the computer first. A register, 0x71, in the sound
chip can have values programmed into it that will alter the sample rate
algorithm of this chip. On my system this results in sample rates below
22050 being set wrong. This register does not get reset with a software
reset. The kernel does not zero out this register. The work around is
to power down the computer when exiting windows and before entering
Linux. I have reported this to the author of the module that supports
this chip, so this should be fixed in a future kernel. If you are an
experienced kernel developer then here is the fix.
Change file drivers/sound/sb_ess.c.
Add the following code to the
function ess_init, at the end of the function:
If you have never modified a kernel before, then I don't recommend doing
this. You can get into really big trouble. This fix should work for
kernels 2.2.11 thru 2.2.14.
Since nobody seems to have found the true source of the problem, I
am using the following fix. I add a single option to /etc/pcmcia/network,
as follows:
Next we describe how to use a PCMCIA ethernet card and
the built-in modem at the same time.
System information
System info: RAM 128MB
Floppy: Generic NEC Floppy
Display depth: 64K
Modem: Sony internal modem (K56flex+V.90) (not a Winmodem!)
Sound card:
ES1879 Plug and Play audio (16-bit Soundblaster compatible)
Display: Crisp 1024x768 active matrix. (One VAIOs has only
one dead pixel, which is near the top edge of the screen, and the other
head two slightly lifeless pixels.)
Installing RedHat 6.1
We performed the following steps:
Serial port: com1, irq 4
Modem: com2, irq3
Audio: irq5, dma 1,5, midi 320h-321h, sound 220h-22fh
Sound
Update (May 25, 2000):
/* Disable audio 2 data if boot
from another OS w/o HW reset */
if (devc->submodel == SUBMDL_ES1879)
{
ess_setmixer(devc, 0x71, 0x00);
}
Speed
At first we thought one of our machines was extremely slow, but
fortunately this was because of a power management problem.
In the BIOS, I set the CPU to slow down when it is not heavily
loaded. Unfortunately, under Linux this resulted in the CPU
running at 1/4th speed all of the time.
64MB Memory Upgrade
I bought a 64MB RAM chip for $199 from
Coast-to-Coast memory.
I was not pleased with their service; for example, they told me
repeatedly that the memory would cost $119 instead of $199, but
charged me $199. This isn't the place to go into more detail
about their poor service; at least the memory arrived and works.
The installation was easy: I followed the very detailed instructions
on the Sony web page, which involve turning everything off,
removing a single screw from the
bottom of the unit, inserting the RAM chip, and putting the screw
back in.
PCMIA Ethernet card
I am using a Linksys EtherFast 10/100 PC Card (PCMPC100).
A common problem with this card, which is well-documented
here, is that after suspend-resume
the card runs 1000 times as slow as it should.
On that web page, someone suggested that restarting the
eth0 interface (
# ...
'restart')
/sbin/ifconfig ${device:?} down up
;;
'resume')
./network stop eth0
./network start eth0
;;
esac
With this change, the ethernet card always works correctly.
I am confused as to why the "resume" option doesn't already exist, as
it is called by the cardmgr daemon when resuming from suspend:
Jan 4 21:20:51 localhost apmd[12336]: Normal Resume after 00:00:12 (99% 2:58) AC power
Jan 4 21:20:52 localhost cardmgr[393]: executing: './network resume eth0'
Add the following to
exclude irq 3
exclude irq 5
Clock problems
Clock problem: suspending and then resume resets the clock to be
exactly eight hours slow in Linux. Thanks to
Ed Schlunder
who told me the solution:
Then, the 8 hours off problem you described was because Red Hat's kernel configuration sets APM to assume your system clock is set to GMT instead of your local time. I compiled a new kernel with the following APM settings and it works much better now: CONFIG_APM=y # CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_USER_SUSPEND is not set # CONFIG_APM_DO_ENABLE is not set CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE=y # CONFIG_APM_DISPLAY_BLANK is not set CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_MULTIPLE_SUSPEND=y CONFIG_APM_IGNORE_SUSPEND_BOUNCE=y # CONFIG_APM_RTC_IS_GMT is not set CONFIG_APM_ALLOW_INTS=y
! Make some substitutions... (type xmodmap -pke for a list of keycodes) keycode 115 = asciitilde grave keycode 117 = Delete keycode 49 = Escape keycode 37 = Control_L keycode 66 = Caps_Lock ! Swap Caps_Lock and Control_L remove Lock = Caps_Lock remove Control = Control_L keysym Control_L = Caps_Lock keysym Caps_Lock = Control_L add Lock = Caps_Lock add Control = Control_LThe command
xmodmap keymapthen makes the above changes, at least until you restart X. However, by placing these lines in the file
I wrote a perl script go-camera.pl,
which, when combined with gphoto, works very well for me.
RIO 500 via the USB port
The Rio 500 MP3 player is
supported under Linux. In order to obtain support for the USB
port, I upgraded to the (unstable) linux kernel version 2.3.47.
Everything worked fine, as long as I didn't turn the laptop on with
the RIO plugged into the USB port. To enable communications with
the RIO, I execute the following script:
# installing these two modules will make the rio 500 communicate w/ my VAIO /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.3.47/usb/usb-uhci.o /sbin/insmod /lib/modules/2.3.47/usb/rio.oAfter upgrading to kernel version 2.3.47, a few things broke. Most noticeably, when I suspend under X the VAIO resumes with the screen shifted about 25% to the right. I can fix it by typing "Ctr-Alt-F1" to switch to a text console, and then "Alt-F7" to switch back to X.
The sound is (usually) nothing but a hissing squeal under VMWARE 2 with Windows 98. Andrew Nguyen also experienced this problem, but reports that the Olympus DS-150 player works under Windows 2000 with VMWARE 2.