Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2000 14:44:36 +0100 From: Nik Clayton <nik@freebsd.org> To: mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Reflections on the Sony Vaio F709 (F590K ?) Message-ID: <20000822144436.A1306@canyon.nothing-going-on.org>
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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
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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<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,XMM>
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: <APM BIOS> on motherboard
apm0: found APM BIOS v1.2, connected at v1.2
npx0: <math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: <Intel 82443BX (440 BX) host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
pci0: <Intel 82443BX (440 BX) host to PCI bridge> at 0.0
pcib1: <Intel 82443BX (440 BX) PCI-PCI (AGP) bridge> at device 1.0 on pci0
pci1: <PCI bus> on pcib1
pci1: <NeoMagic model 0016 VGA-compatible display device> at 0.0 irq 9
isab0: <Intel 82371AB PCI to ISA bridge> at device 7.0 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on isab0
atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 ATA33 controller> port 0xfc90-0xfc9f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
ata1: at 0x170 irq 15 on atapci0
pci0: <Intel 82371AB/EB (PIIX4) USB controller> at 7.2 irq 9
intpm0: <Intel 82371AB Power management controller> port 0x1040-0x104f irq 9 at device 7.3 on pci0
intpm0: I/O mapped 1040
intpm0: intr IRQ 9 enabled revision 0
smbus0: <System Management Bus> on intsmb0
intpm0: PM I/O mapped 8000
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x104d, dev=0x8039) at 8.0 irq 9
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1073, dev=0x0010) at 9.0 irq 9
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x14f1, dev=0x2443) at 10.0 irq 9
pcic-pci0: <Ricoh RL5C478 PCI-CardBus Bridge> at device 12.0 on pci0
pcic-pci1: <Ricoh RL5C478 PCI-CardBus Bridge> at device 12.1 on pci0
fdc0: <NEC 72065B or clone> 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: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: model GlidePoint, device ID 0
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
pcic0: <Intel i82365> at port 0x3e0 iomem 0xd0000 irq 10 on isa0
pcic0: management irq 10
pccard0: <PC Card bus -- kludge version> on pcic0
pccard1: <PC Card bus -- kludge version> 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: <Parallel port> 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: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
plip0: <PLIP network interface> on ppbus0
ppi0: <Parallel I/O> on ppbus0
unknown: <PNP0c02> can't assign resources
unknown: <PNP0303> can't assign resources
unknown: <PNP0700> can't assign resources
unknown: <PNP0501> can't assign resources
unknown: <SNY7001> can't assign resources
unknown: <PNP0401> can't assign resources
BRIDGE 990810, have 2 interfaces
ad0: 17301MB <FUJITSU MHJ2181AT> [35152/16/63] at ata0-master using UDMA33
acd0: DVD-ROM <TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-C2402> at ata1-master using PIO4
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s1a
--AhhlLboLdkugWU4S
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#
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--
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