From owner-freebsd-mobile Tue Aug 22 6:47:21 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: from nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk [193.237.89.66]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1AB9537B424 for ; Tue, 22 Aug 2000 06:47:04 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from nik@localhost) by nothing-going-on.demon.co.uk (8.11.0/8.11.0) id e7MDigv01878 for mobile@freebsd.org; Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:44:42 +0100 (BST) (envelope-from nik) Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:44:36 +0100 From: Nik Clayton To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Reflections on the Sony Vaio F709 (F590K ?) Message-ID: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="AhhlLboLdkugWU4S" Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5i Organization: FreeBSD Project Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org --AhhlLboLdkugWU4S Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline Hi guys, I've been playing around with a new Sony Vaio for the past week or so, and thought I'd drop a line about it here, so that anyone considering getting one can get some advice, either now, or in the archives later. First off, it's badged in the UK as the PCG-F709. I don't see any reference to that on the Sony site, but it looks like it's very similar to what they're calling the PCG-F590, see http://www.ita.sel.sony.com/products/pc/notebook/pcgf590k.html for more details. In brief, it's 750Mhz PIII w/ 128MB of RAM and an 18GB IDE disk. There's also a built in modem and DVD drive. This is my upgrade from a stalwart F270, which was a 333Mhz PII w/ 64MB of RAM and a 6GB disk. 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. 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. 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. I can still use tools like apm(8), and various X battery monitors, so it's no great loss. 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. 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. 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. . . 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. Speaking of which, configuring X was a little more longwinded than I'm used to. Again, this is due to the NeoMagic XL+ chipset, which XFree86 doesn't support (the F270 has the NeoMagic AV chipset, which works with no problems). You can work around this (and there are messages in the -mobile archive explaining how to do so) -- in a nutshell you tell XFree86 it's a NM2200 instead, and then everything works fine. 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. I don't doubt the support for the hardware will catch up in time. In the meantime, I've attached the kernel config file I'm currently using, and the dmesg output, in case anyone's interested. N -- Internet connection, $19.95 a month. Computer, $799.95. Modem, $149.95. Telephone line, $24.95 a month. Software, free. USENET transmission, hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Thinking before posting, priceless. Somethings in life you can't buy. For everything else, there's MasterCard. -- Graham Reed, in the Scary Devil Monastery --AhhlLboLdkugWU4S Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: attachment; filename="dmesg.out" Copyright (c) 1992-2000 The FreeBSD Project. Copyright (c) 1979, 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1994 The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. FreeBSD 5.0-CURRENT #12: Tue Aug 22 13:04:08 BST 2000 nik@canyon.nothing-going-on.org:/local/0/usr/src/sys/compile/CANYON Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz CPU: Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron (744.47-MHz 686-class CPU) Origin = "GenuineIntel" Id = 0x683 Stepping = 3 Features=0x383f9ff real memory = 134152192 (131008K bytes) avail memory = 127897600 (124900K bytes) Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc029d000. Pentium Pro MTRR support enabled md0: Malloc disk apm0: on motherboard apm0: found APM BIOS v1.2, connected at v1.2 npx0: on motherboard npx0: INT 16 interface pcib0: on motherboard pci0: on pcib0 pci0: at 0.0 pcib1: at device 1.0 on pci0 pci1: on pcib1 pci1: at 0.0 irq 9 isab0: at device 7.0 on pci0 isa0: on isab0 atapci0: port 0xfc90-0xfc9f at device 7.1 on pci0 ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0 ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0 pci0: at 7.2 irq 9 intpm0: port 0x1040-0x104f irq 9 at device 7.3 on pci0 intpm0: I/O mapped 1040 intpm0: intr IRQ 9 enabled revision 0 smbus0: on intsmb0 intpm0: PM I/O mapped 8000 pci0: (vendor=0x104d, dev=0x8039) at 8.0 irq 9 pci0: (vendor=0x1073, dev=0x0010) at 9.0 irq 9 pci0: (vendor=0x14f1, dev=0x2443) at 10.0 irq 9 pcic-pci0: at device 12.0 on pci0 pcic-pci1: at device 12.1 on pci0 fdc0: at port 0x3f0-0x3f5,0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2 on isa0 fdc0: FIFO enabled, 8 bytes threshold fd0: <1440-KB 3.5" drive> on fdc0 drive 0 atkbdc0: at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0 atkbd0: flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0 kbd0 at atkbd0 psm0: irq 12 on atkbdc0 psm0: model GlidePoint, device ID 0 vga0: at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0 sc0: at flags 0x100 on isa0 sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300> pcic0: at port 0x3e0 iomem 0xd0000 irq 10 on isa0 pcic0: management irq 10 pccard0: on pcic0 pccard1: on pcic0 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 ppc0: at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0 ppc0: Generic chipset (ECP/PS2/NIBBLE) in COMPATIBLE mode ppc0: FIFO with 16/16/8 bytes threshold lpt0: on ppbus0 lpt0: Interrupt-driven port plip0: on ppbus0 ppi0: on ppbus0 unknown: can't assign resources unknown: can't assign resources unknown: can't assign resources unknown: can't assign resources unknown: can't assign resources unknown: can't assign resources BRIDGE 990810, have 2 interfaces ad0: 17301MB [35152/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33 acd0: DVD-ROM at ata1-master using PIO4 Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a --AhhlLboLdkugWU4S Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: attachment; filename=CANYON # machine i386 cpu I686_CPU ident CANYON maxusers 64 hints "CANYON.hints" #Default places to look for devices. options INET #InterNETworking options FFS #Berkeley Fast Filesystem options FFS_ROOT #FFS usable as root device [keep this!] options SOFTUPDATES #Enable FFS soft updates support options COMPAT_43 #Compatible with BSD 4.3 [KEEP THIS!] options UCONSOLE #Allow users to grab the console options USERCONFIG #boot -c editor options VISUAL_USERCONFIG #visual boot -c editor options KTRACE #ktrace(1) support options SYSVSHM #SYSV-style shared memory options SYSVMSG #SYSV-style message queues options SYSVSEM #SYSV-style semaphores options P1003_1B #Posix P1003_1B real-time extensions options _KPOSIX_PRIORITY_SCHEDULING options KBD_INSTALL_CDEV # install a CDEV entry in /dev options RANDOMDEV #entropy device device isa device eisa device pci # Floppy drives device fdc # ATA and ATAPI devices device ata device atadisk # ATA disk drives device atapicd # ATAPI CDROM drives device atapifd # ATAPI floppy drives device atapist # ATAPI tape drives options ATA_STATIC_ID #Static device numbering #options ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI_DMA #Enable DMA on ATAPI devices # SCSI peripherals #device scbus # SCSI bus (required) #device da # Direct Access (disks) # atkbdc0 controls both the keyboard and the PS/2 mouse device atkbdc 1 device atkbd device psm device vga # splash screen/screen saver device splash # syscons is the default console driver, resembling an SCO console device sc 1 # Floating point support - do not disable. device npx # Power management support (see NOTES for more options) device apm # PCCARD (PCMCIA) support device card device pcic # Serial (COM) ports device sio # Parallel port device ppc device ppbus # Parallel port bus (required) device lpt # Printer device plip # TCP/IP over parallel device ppi # Parallel port interface device #device vpo # Requires scbus and da # PCI Ethernet NICs that use the common MII bus controller code. #device miibus # MII bus support device xe # Pseudo devices - the number indicates how many units to allocated. device loop # Network loopback device ether # Ethernet support device tun # Packet tunnel. device pty # Pseudo-ttys (telnet etc) device md # Memory "disks" # The `bpf' device enables the Berkeley Packet Filter. # Be aware of the administrative consequences of enabling this! device bpf # Berkeley packet filter # USB support #device uhci # UHCI PCI->USB interface #device ohci # OHCI PCI->USB interface #device usb # USB Bus (required) #device udbp # USB Double Bulk Pipe devices #device ugen # Generic #device uhid # "Human Interface Devices" #device ukbd # Keyboard #device ulpt # Printer #device umass # Disks/Mass storage - Requires scbus and da #device ums # Mouse #device urio # Diamond Rio 500 MP3 player options BRIDGE #device pcm # Hangs on boot options NO_F00F_HACK device smbus device intpm --AhhlLboLdkugWU4S-- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message