Sony Vaio PCG-F270 under Linux
Sony Vaio PCG-F270 under LinuxI've a Sony Vaio PCG-F270. The following is the status of the various hardware that I own, and how well it works under Linux. Your mileage may vary. Hopefully, this'll be relevant to other Vaio PCG-F series (they call it the 3max+ series or some marketing garbage like that), but maybe it won't be. I'm currently using Debian, but this info ought to be relevant to any distribution. I've also included info about hardware I've added on; this will be likely different for you, of course.
| Device | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| floppy drive | works | standard kernel floppy drivers |
| hard drive | works | standard kernel ATAPI/IDE drivers. Partition 4, with type 0xa0, is
used by Hibernate mode; don't touch it. Newer models apparently
hibernate differently; details may be posted when I get them. I upgraded my hard drive recently; some one has posted instructions (with photos!) on the web if you would like to do the same. |
| DVD drive | works | standard kernel ATAPI/IDE drivers for CD-ROMs. DVD support is finally more-or-less working. I used to use VideoLAN to play movies, but ogle is better. No word yet on whether you can watch movies from other than Region 1. |
| keyboard | works | standard kernel drivers. The 'programmable power keys' don't work, but I don't really like them anyway. Some of the Fn+Fx keys (e.g., volume control, CD eject) don't work, but everything that can only (i.e., brightness control) be achieved by Fn keys does appear to work. |
| touchpad | works | standard kernel psaux drivers. gpm -t ps2, and type ps2 mouse under X. I haven't been able to get scrolling to work like it does under Win98 (drag your finger along the right or bottom edge of the touchpad), but I haven't really tried that hard. |
| screen / video card | works | standard VGA console drivers in kernel for textmode. For X, any reasonably recent version should work fine. If you like kernel framebuffer support, you can either use the VESA driver (very slow) or the native NeoMagic drivers in kernel 2.4.20. If you like to watch DVDs or other video files, performance will be much improved if you use the XVideo extension. Support for NeoMagic cards was written after XFree86 4.2.0 was released, but you can follow these directions to get support now. |
| sound | works | support for the NM2200 has appeared in the 2.2.13 (and probably 2.3.x for some unknown-to-me value of x) kernel and continues through the 2.4.x series. Download the newest kernel, re-configure, and compile. Further info in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/sound/NM256 The NM chip doesn't do MIDI, so you'll either have to get SoftOSS working, or use timidity. Further info is can be found here, at the site of the person who wrote the driver. ALSA support is possible but kinda sucked when I tried it. |
| power management | works almost all the time | APM support in the kernel, and the apm tools. You can also turn off the screen to save power by pressing Fn+D. Fn+S enters 'System Idle' mode and Fn+Esc enters 'Standby' mode. I'm not exactly sure of the difference between these two. Fn+F12 enters 'Hibernate' mode, which saves the state of the system to disk and turns the computer off. (This is all in the manual, but maybe you didn't read the manual.) If resuming from power-saving modes more than once or twice between full reboots doesn't always work, see below for a possible solution, sent in by a reader. |
| serial port | works | standard kernel serial drivers |
| parallel port | works | standard kernel parport and lp drivers. I've not tried it with anything other than a fairly normal printer, but there's no reason that I can think of that it shouldn't work with PLIP or any other parallel-port device. |
| printer: Canon BJC-2000 | works | pretend it's a BJC-800 if you're using apsfilter. You can enable
printer status readbacks and do cat /dev/lp0 to get some kind of random
info; anyone know how to interpret this? NOTE: I got rid of this printer, because I would have to buy a new ink cartridge every couple months, even if I only printed, say, 10 pages in that time. Oh, well, it cost me like $20 -- you get what you pay for. |
| pcmcia slots | works | get and install pcmcia-cs, if your distro doesn't do so for you. Use the i82365 driver if you're ever asked. I haven't needed any options. With some 2.3.x kernels, pcmcia drivers are included, but you still need to download the tools. |
| pcmcia network card: LinkSys EtherFast 10/100 | works | should be automagically made to work by cardmgr. It's the pcnet_cs driver. |
| pcmcia network card: Belkin CardBus Network Card F5D5010 | works | After years of faithful service, the LinkSys card stopped working, so I bought the Belkin one. As mentioned on the CD-ROM enclosed with the card, enable PCMCIA CardBus support and use the 8139too driver. |
| pcmcia modem card: Hawking Technologies 56K V.90 | works | since the internal modem didn't work (see below), I bought a modem card. It seems to work. It appears as a serial port, dials, does ppp, and generally behaves like a modem. It seems to suck though, in that connections often hang after a time. I don't know if the fault is the card, Linux, or my setup. |
| pcmcia ieee1394 card: SIIG 1394 Dual-Port CardBus | works, kinda | So, I got an iPod, and I want it to work with
Linux. Since the i.Link port that Sony gives us is not compatible with
Linux, I bought the SIIG CardBus card. Experimental IEEE1394 (aka
FireWire) drivers are included with recent versions of the Linux kernel.
They work, but not very well. There are two main problems. First, it seems
I have to have the PCMCIA card plugged in and the iPod hooked up when I
turn on the computer: hot plugging doesn't work. This sucks, because it
implies that I have to reboot to add any songs to the iPod. The second is
that I have to use the sbp2_serialize_io=1 sbp2_max_sectors=1
options when loading the sbp2 module, which is used to talk
to FireWire hard drives, else I get frequent crashes. This sucks because
it makes I/O slower. But, anyway, I can do the essential transferring of
files. I like the gnuPod
software -- it's bare-bones, but it does the job. |
| apple iPod | ||
| i.Link | doesn't work | In case you haven't figured it out, i.Link is also known as Firewire or IEEE 1394. I don't own any IEEE1394 devices so I don't honestly care too much, but there is a webpage about a Linux IEEE 1394 subsystem. Apparently, Sony's controller chip is not compaitible with Linux, at least for now. |
| IrDA | works? | Well, I built the IrDA kernel modules (part of the standard kernel), but haven't tested them, since I don't have any other IrDA devices. |
| USB | works | Newer 2.3.x kernels have USB built in. A lot of devices are unsupported, though, so it might be prudent to check the Linux-USB site before you buy anything. |
| USB Webcam: Creative VideoBlaster 3 | works | It's an ov511, and it's got drivers in newer kernels. I can't figure out how to make the button on it do anything, though. When I first plugged the camera in, picture quality was terrible, but, after installing the Windows drivers and then booting back into Linux, the quality was much improved. I cannot explain this behavior. |
| USB Audio: Roland ED UA-30 | works | Basically functions as an external soundcard with analog and digital linein and lineout and a few mixer bars. A really nifty device. It works with the normal USB audio-class drivers. It seems to click an awful lot whenever there is video activity; there's probably a way to fix this, but I don't know it. UPDATE: With 2.4.0 kernel, the clicking seems to have gone away. |
| USB Camera: Olympus Camedia C-1/D-100 | works | There's some kind of wacky bug in the camera, so you have to hack your kernel if you want it to work. But once you've made that change (which is really quite easy), it works as a USB storage device, which can be mounted as a VFAT filesystem. Pretty easy, and neat. |
| modem | works?! | Originally, I wrote: It's a WinModem. It'll possibly never
work. Praise your ethernet connection if you have one, and see some
info on what's wrong with WinModems if you don't. But then, 3 years after I bought this laptop, this changed: Linux drivers for Conexant (aka Rockwell) modems, such as the one in the PCG-F270, were released! The drivers aren't fully Free Software, but neither do they cost any money, and they seem to work. You want the HCF drivers; don't be fooled by their 'Modem List' application which gets confused and tells you to get the HSF kind. |
| external monitor connection | works | It works, as you'd expect. Press Fn+F7 to toggle among LCD-only, LCD/VGA, and VGA-only. |
| external mouse/keyboard connection | works | It works with my free-after-rebate PS/2 mouse. You can even leave the mouse plugged in and still use the touchpad when you want to. You can even try to use the mouse and touchpad at the same time and have the pointer get all confused. Much better than some laptops I've seen where plugging in a mouse disables the built-in pointing device. Similar results with a keyboard. |
Overall, the Sony Vaio seems to be a pretty Linux-compatible notebook. With the exception of the i.Link, everything ought to work. If you have any questions or thoughts, or if I've forgotten something feel free to get in touch with me. My address is mlc67 AT columbia.edu; replace the AT with an at-sign, of course.
A reader sent me the following email (thanks!):
Date: Sat, 20 Nov 1999 00:33:46 -0700 (MST) From: Ed Schlunder <zilym AT asu.edu> To: mlc67 AT columbia.edu Subject: Sony Vaio PCG-F270 and Linux On your web page, you mention that Suspend/Hibernate don't always resume properly in Linux. I have a Sony Vaio PCG-F160 and had the same problem: I could suspend or hibernate then resume once, but then would need to do a full reboot before doing it again or it would crash on resume. I found out from one of the other Sony web pages how to fix this though: /sbin/lspci Find the USB Controller entry, mine is: 00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4 USB (rev 01) Add "/sbin/setpci -s 0:7.2 command=0" to an early part of your boot up script process (I used /etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit right after /proc is mounted). Now I can suspend/hibernate all I want in Linux and it always works properly. It's great, not even my IBM Thinkpads at work can do that right everytime like my Sony can. --- Ed Schlunder <zilym AT asu.edu> f u cn rd ths, u cn gt a gd jb n cmptr prgrmmng.
I tried it before owning any USB devices, and it seems to work. I'm not sure exactly why USB should prevent resuming, especially if you're not using USB. However, if you are using USB support, do not perform this command; it is likely to cause bad things to happen and you will probably have to power off your computer.
Last revision: 07/08/03 05:25:11 AM UTC