Sony Vaio PCG Z600RE and Linux

$Id: index.html,v 1.6 2000/12/19 09:59:15 baer Exp $

The Z600RE seems to be an European variant of the Z505SX/HE as described by Edi Weitz

It is a Pentium III 500MHz machine with 128MB RAM, 12GB Harddisk, 12.1'' XGA-Display (1024x768), Sound, USB, Memory Stick, 1 PCMCIA Type 1, i.Link, IrDA, and 10/100BaseT ethernet on board. 16x CD, USB-Floppy, and port replicator with serial, parallel, USB, VGA, and I.link external. No PS/2

I use this machine with Linux only (Gekauft, gesehen, gelacht, gelöscht - bought, seen, laughed, deleted ;-)
Ok, most things work. Some do not. So I need a little help...

Actual state:

• Distribution: Mandrake 7/PhoeniX 0.1
• Kernel: 2.2.18 with international patches and reiserfs
• ALSA sound

News

• Jog Shuttle can be used the first time - let's say: in a rudimental way
  See JogShuttle section
• Suspend and Hibernate is working now. Hibernate without any DOS thingies!
  See APM section
• It´s getting hot swappable with working floppy! Using kernel 2.2.18 does not need the actual USB-backport anymore. See USB-Support for the actual changes of the USB setup.
• Some IrDA things done. Maybe it is running till the end of this year.


• Alsa sounddriver works! See Sound section!

The black list

Component	State
Graphics: NeoMagic
Sound: Yamaha DS-XG
Network: Intel 82557
Touchpad: PS/2
Jog Shuttle
PCMCIA
APM
IrDA
USB floppy
Modem: WinModem as usual...
Memory Stick
S400/i.Link
External components
USB Mouse: Logitech TrackMan Wheel
iomega Clik!
Handspring Visor

Distribution

I used the actual Mandrake 7.0 non-GPL version. Do not worry if you like other Dists, some of the Dist-dependend things may help you too (special SuSE tips can be found on the page of Edi Weitz).

I did the installation with the external CD-ROM. Please remember: like with most Sony Laptops, try linux ide="0x180,0x386" at bootprompt of the installing sequence. Remember to delete the append line in lilo.conf after installation. I did expert installation on one extended partition with 10 logical partitions. Because of changing the kernel with the international variant (from http://www.kerneli.org) I use crypted partitions via ciphered loop devices.

Problems

Hey, these are only distribution probs, but maybe you will find it usefull...

Disk Drake

This is the Mandrake Version of Red Hat's Disk Druid. Because of the large Harddisk, I liked to install the system in about 5Gig and leave the rest of the 11Gig extended partition free.

But Disk Drake has an other behavior like the original Disk Druid: the extended partition has only the size of the used disk space! Create a dummy partition of the rest of disk space. Then you can create new partitions later.

I had to use GNU parted (from http:www.gnu.org) to resize the extended /dev/hda1.

Swapping to Gnome

Set "GNOME" into /etc/sysconfig/desktop.

Default link in /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions to your favorate Window Manager.

German keyboard

Component description

Graphix

This is another NeoMagic. I tried the SVGA-Server which was installed by Mandrake. No probs.

My actual XF86Config. This is a config file for german nodeadkeys with xkb and the TrackMan Marble Wheel in USB-mode. Maybe some Red Hat developer should look at this file: This is the way to configure the keyboard for german setup. No ModeLine stuff!

I use the fb for the virtual terminals. Try a kernel with fb compiled in and vga=791 at startup (16 Bit, 1024x768). I am running fb and the SVGA-X Server with 16 Bit, 1024x768. 24 Bit works too but I do not like the behavior of Netscape in this mode (not enough colors for Icons :-))

News: I have free Alsa sound from alsa-cvs-tree working (actual driver 0.5.10).

What do you need? Kernel compiled with sound support (see alsa-Readme). The actual driver, library, and utils of Alsa

... and removed the OSS-code of course :-))

Network

Touchpad

• Add -D_LOOSE_KERNEL_NAMES in spicdriver/Makefile
• Try:
  tar xvzf jogutils.tar.gz
$ cd jogutils
$ make
$ su
# mknod /dev/spic c 60 0
# insmod spicdriver/spicdriver
# exit
$ cp jogapp/rcfile ~/.jogapprc
$ jogapp/jogapp


PCMCIA

• an /etc/sysconfig/apmd
• the /etc/sysconfig/apm-scripts/apmcontinue

Ok, there are two little problems at this time: When I plugged in a USB mouse before suspend it is not active anymore after suspend. I have to plug it out and in - then it works again.

The other problem may be Mandrake specific: If I did a suspend during midnight the logrotate/sequrity/updatedb stuff is running after giving the machine the wakeup.

I corrected my setup with the USB setup from Alex Stewart (hey this site is great). In his setup there is a /etc/rc.d/init.d/usb. It does the job. There is no additional script and no entries in /etc/modules.conf anymore.
Now I use the USB support for the Handspring Visor with pilot-xfer but there are problems with the pilot-applet for GNOME.

Modem

Memory stick

It should act like a vfat-Harddisk. But I cannot find a Bios switch for activating/deactivating it and /proc/pci says:

  Bus  0, device  13, function  0:
    FLASH memory: Unknown vendor Unknown device (rev 1).
      Vendor id=104d. Device id=808a.
      Medium devsel.  IRQ 9.  
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xfedf7800 [0xfedf7800].
    

S400/i.Link

This is a "normal" 3 Button mouse with wheel - ok it is a Trackball, but it is just the same. To get it run there must be USB support installed. To get it run with a 2.2.14 you need a USB backpart patch from http://www.linux-usb.org.

The X setup for this additional mouse can be found in my XF86Config.

Iomega Clik!

I wrote "it was needed". ide-floppy.c is supported by Paul Bristow now and there is Clik! support with the native 2.2.18 now.

$Id: index.html,v 1.6 2000/12/19 09:59:15 baer Exp $
Last modified: Sat Feb 3 11:38:39 CET 2001