Sony Vaio 505ve LINUX Install Notes

Need to tell kernel where to find special Sony CD. Try

linux ide2=0x180,0x386

Do NOT enable pcmcia for install. Sony makes the CD look like ATA.

Need XFcom-Neomagic X server, choose generic mouse, ps2, emulate 3 buttons.

Autoprobe will find nm2160 SVGA, which will work, but not perfectly. Will not do 24 bit color.

rschnei2@gmu.edu had to add

exclude irq 5

to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts to prevent pcmcia from conflicting with internal soundblaster. Then set up /etc/pcmcia/network.opts as desired for LinkSys 10bt.

Note that my LinkSys 10/100 PCMCIA card does not work entirely. It works OK on all 10BT networks I have tried, and works slowly on the 100BT Hub at work. However, at home it looses MOST packets (like 90%) on either of my cheaper 100BT hubs, AND when cross-wired directly to either of my desktops. If anybody has any suggestions about what might be wrong, please let know.

Type <F2> after sony logo displays on boot to get to BIOS

F8 while booting to select cmd prompt.

Fn-F5, Fn-Shift-F5 adjust brightness.

X probe reports PCI: NeoMagic NM2200 rev 32, with 2560K Video RAM.

Needed to move /dev/cdrom to hdc.

gpm -t ps/2 works on original kernel.

To manually initialize LinkSys card on my vaio, use:

ifconfig eth0 192.168.1.14 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

Default kernel recognized my LinkSys as NE2000 Compatible, io 0x300, irq 10, hw_addr 00:e0:98:08:e6:bb

To get a test kernel, I have been using loadlin on the W98 half of this laptop. Procedure is:

make menuconfig
make dep
make bzImage

Then move bzImage to /mnt/c/linux for use with loadlin.

lsmod on old SuSE install reported:

pcnet_cs
8390
ds
i82365
pcmcia_core
nls_iso8859-1
nls_cp437
vfat
fat

After booting gentoo, I took out the CD-ROM, put in my linksys network card and typed:

insmod pcmcia_core
insmod i82365
insmod ds
cardmgr -f

this seemed to automagicly load the 8390 driver for my card (ne2k-compatible)

I have DHCP set up on my network, so

dhcpcd eth0

configured my network.

I have swap on hda5, boot on hda6, and / on hda7. So I start them up with:

swapon /dev/hda5
mkdir /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/hda7 /mnt/gentoo
#mkdir /mnt/gentoo/boot  # should already have been done now...
mount /dev/hda6 /mnt/gentoo/boot

I'm having trouble re-mounting the cd-rom. Using the parameters above, gentoo's kernel would not boot. I'm going to try to live without it. I'll mount it on another machine, and try to live with scp to get stuff off of it.

I scp'd the stage1 tarball off and continued. Unfortunately, a vital directory, etc/make.profile was a symbolic link to an area of the portage tree. I had to get portage, and copy this directory over to the gentoo box. After that I was able to contunue with the rsync.

One person did

- run make menuconfig as usual
- uncheck the pcmcia/cardbus option
- configure the rest of the stuff like you have been doing
- finish running make dep, make clean, make bzImage, etc
- run emerge pcmcia-cs
- run rc-update add pcmcia default
- complete the rest of the installation

it works for me (just finished mine and rebooted, now my nic is up and humming 'icon_biggrin.gif'

another:

What I ended up doing, in a nutshell, was a FRESH install. When it came time to configure the kernel options, I configured it without PCMCIA/CardBus support and WITHOUT support for the network card. I then compiled the kernal, etc. Once done, did an emerge pcmcia-cs. Made sure that the /etc/init.d/net was configured right, and that /etc/conf.d/pcmcia looked ok (made the net script use dhcp for eth0).

Then, I rebooted, logged in. There was no network support (as there shouldn't have been).

I then did:

insmod pcmcia_core
insmod i82365
insmod ds
cardmgr -f

And my network card came to life, the net script got an ip address, and all was good.

Chad then told me to add the i82365 and ds entries into /etc/modules.autoload, and do an rc-update add pcmcia default so the pcmcia_core would get loaded, did those, rebooted, and wham, networking up on boot.

There may be problems with the old dependencies not getting totally wiped. Try this procedure

cd /usr/src/linux
cp .config myConfig
make mrproper
cp myConfig .config
make oldconfig
make dep
make bzImage
make modules
make modules_install
mount /boot
cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/bzImage2

None of this worked on the XFS kernel. When I went back to the vanilla kernel, it worked. For some reason, I could not work with the pnp as modules (unresolved symbols in i82365 module). But when I compiled the PNP into the kernel, it worked. To sumarize:

Build a kernel with NO PCMCIA support at all, but go ahead and build everything else you will need. Note that in addition to the Gentoo needs (DEVFS, etc...) PNP should be compiled in (not a module)
emerge pcmcia-cs

Then when you re-boot, you should be able to

insmod pcmcia_core
insmod i82365
insmod ds
cardmgr -f

Here's my XF86Config for the Neomagic chipset.

One user reports that the 505ve uses the Yamaha YMF-744B chipset for sound.

Attempting the kernel ymfpci driver made my kernel unstable. oops...

I emerged the alsa-driver, and it reported

 * You might want to edit file /etc/modules.d/alsa according to your
 * hardware configuration.
 * 
 * If you are going to be using the 'alsasound' init script, make sure
 * that you add it to the 'boot' runlevel (not 'default').

after installation.