From owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Jan 13 09:57:50 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Received: by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix, from userid 618) id 1E98716A52B; Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:57:49 -0800 (PST) To: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 09:57:49 -0800 (PST) X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.4ME+ PL54 (25)] MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Message-Id: <20040113175749.1E98716A52B@hub.freebsd.org> From: wpaul@FreeBSD.ORG (Bill Paul) Subject: Sony TR2A and FreeBSD -- any comments? X-BeenThere: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Mobile computing with FreeBSD List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 17:57:50 -0000 I currently own a Sony PCG-C1VP Picturebook laptop which has served me well for about two years now (in spite of its disk dying on me recently). I'm contemplating upgrading it to a Sony TR2A, but I'd prefer not to plunk down the money on it only to encounter unexpected problems trying to get FreeBSD running on it. Unfortunately, I don't know anyone who has one of these things, and I can't easily experiment on the demo models in the local computer stores, so I'm hoping someone here has some experience with one of these and can answer some questions. Has anyone tried running FreeBSD 5.x on one of these yet? Does it actually boot up and run correctly? Does the cardbus bridge work? (Hi Warner!) Does the ATA controller work? And, most important of all, does anyone know if the built-in camera can be made to work? In the Picturebook, the camera is a PCI device, and I have a special capture utility installed to operate it. However the camera in the TR2A appears to be a USB device, and I have no idea what chip it uses. It has been suggested that it might work with gphoto, but I have no proof of this one way or the other. All the other hardware in the TR2A should work with FreeBSD and XFree86, except possibly for the modem. It has two USB 2.0 ports, firewire, built-in Intel 82559 10/100 ethernet, Intel 82852/82855 graphics, Centrino 802.11b wireless, DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive, and a 40GB disk. About the only thing I don't like about it is the fact that it doesn't come with a recovery media DVD. Instead, it has a recovery 'partition' on the disk, and somewhere there is an option to burn your own set of recovery CDs -- _nine_ of them! Any info anyone can offer would be much appreciated. I would love to get one of these things running with FreeBSD 5.2-RELEASE on it. -Bill -- ============================================================================= -Bill Paul (510) 749-2329 | Senior Engineer, Master of Unix-Fu wpaul@windriver.com | Wind River Systems ============================================================================= you're just BEGGING to face the moose =============================================================================