Sony VAIO GRV670

[Fuzeron]

This last week, i got Gentoo up on my Sony VAIO laptop,

Stats:
Model: Sony VAIO PCG-GRV670
P4 2.6 Ghz (not p4 mobile)
512 DDR
aTi Mobility Radeon 9000
40 Gig HD
16.1 inch LCD

For the most part everything is running great.

I got Opengl working, correct resolution 1280x1024, it dual boots with Windows XP just fine.

There are a few things im still having problems with

Should i use APM or ACPI, APM isnt working right now, im not sure if i need to tweak it or if i should use ACPI. When i first compiled, i checked both ACPI and APM and the system was not stable, it would hang up on boot at various points. so i used APM and no hang ups, im wondering if i should ditch APM and go with ACPI. any thoughts?

USB mouse, i want to be able to use both my USB mouse and the glide pad, right now the glide pad is the only thing that works, when i try to follow the "Desktop How-To" i fail to get USB working because there is no /dev/input, but i checked my kernel logs and it finds my generic USB mouse. im kinda stuck on that

other then that everything is working good, i did a emerge kde, and it emerged xfree and kde and all there dependentcies from a base install, in about 9 hours. im really impressed how easy it was to get my video card working, i get around 2030 fps in glxgears, and i installed RTCW:ET this morning and it runs good. i think i might try ati-drivers next, see what a difference they make.

now im just waiting on support for my 802.11g wireless card ( Netgear WG511), then im good to go.

Fuzeron
A Happy Gentoo User

[John2845]

Hi,

I'm glad to hear the installation is going well. I have a VAIO PCG-GRV680, which I think is almost identical to the GRV670. I also have a dual boot gentoo/XP system. When I compiled the kernel, I didn't select either APM or ACPI. So far I've had no problems at all. Later on, I'll experiment with them, but I wanted to get other things working first.

I was wondering if you have tried to get your modem working. I think they both have a conexant hsf winmodem. Anyway, I've been unsuccessful at getting mine to work under gentoo. I'm using the vanilla-sources (I originally had gentoo-sources, but the hsfserial module wouldn't load properly, it was always initializing) and I emerged hsflinmodem. Unfortunately, the modem still doesn't seem to work. The modules seem to load properly but no device ttyHSF0 shows up under /dev. When I dmesg it gives me some kind of warning that it couldn't open a port properly. Sorry, I'm posting this from WinXP since I can't get my modem to work, so I'm working from memory on the warning. I'll check later for the exact message. You don't mention the modem in your post, so I'm not sure if you tried to get it too work. I've been searching the web alot recently to find other linux users who use the GRV670/680 series, but so far have been unsuccesful.

By the way, I love the GRV680. It is really a nice laptop (aside from the linux/modem issues). The screen is beautiful, but I wish it came in 1600x1200.

John

[Fuzeron]

i havent tried yet to get the modem working, im not sure if ill try anytime soon.

i fixed a few of the things, i recompiled with only ACPI, and now i get proper power managment stuff working.

also i can cat /dev/input/mice and get input, but it still doesnt work in xfree, i think i need to tweak my xfree config a little more.

but other then that, im loving gentoo on this, its so fast, plus i can play decent games on it, so its all good, i still have WinXP for my wireless card, and DVD's/CDBURNING.

Fuzeron

[John2845]

I'm glad you got the power management working. I'll try compiling ACPI into my kernel.

I guess I'll keep plugging away at the modem problem. I included some additional information below. If anyone can figure out what the problem is or point me in the right direction, I would sure appreciate it. After I "modprobe hsfserial" I get the following output from "lsmod"

Module Size Used by Tainted: P
hsfich 95308 0 (autoclean)
hsfserial 23220 0 (unused)
hsfengine 869292 0 [hsfserial]
hsfosspec 21916 0 [hsfich hsfserial hsfengine]

When I "dmesg" after inserting the modules, I get the following additional lines

PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin B of device 00:1f.6. Please try using pci=biosirq.
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 00:1f.6 to 64
LinuxHookInterrupt: request for IRQ 0 failed
hsf_request_port: open failed


I don't understand the above error, but I think it has to do with why things aren't working. I extracted the modem lines from "lspci -v"

00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
Subsystem: Sony Corporation: Unknown device 813c
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
I/O ports at 2400 [size=256]
I/O ports at 2000 [size=128] PCI CONFIGURATION INFORMATION

When I use the Windows ListMdm program I get the following output.

READ:
VENDOR ID : 8086
DEVICE ID : 2486
SUBVENDOR ID : 104D
SUBDEVICE ID : 813C
REVISION ID : 02

DEDUCED INFORMATION:
VENDOR NAME : ICH
DEVICE NAME : ICH3
SUBVENDOR NAME : SONY -- HTTP://WWW.SONY.COM
MODEM TYPE : HSF
WINXP INBUILD SUPPORT : NO

Thanks,
John

[akvalentine]

[Hibbelharry]

i have got my modem working fine. since no newer vaio supports apm, you have to enable acpi for proper power management and pci irq routing. missing acpi will cause your modem not to work, it's a requirement. see the hsf linmodem webpage for reference. i'm working with a nv105 notebook, which has the almost the same pcb build in. another hint: you can use the normal gentoo or gss sources. i use a 2.4.21gss-rc6 kernel. just be sure not to enable preemtible kernel option in the kernel configuration.

when your mouse still doesn't work using gpm might be a solution.

greetz
Wilken Haase

please excuse my bad german english.

[John2845]

Hi Wilken,

Well, I recompiled my kernel (vanilla-sources) with ACPI enabled, but the modem still doesn't seem to work. I get the same output from dmesg that I posted above. I didn't have a whole lot of time to play with it today, so I may try experimenting a little more along the lines you mentioned. Right now I'm in the middle of emerging kde which is taking much longer than I expected, so I will wait until that finishes before trying new kernel options.

Thanks,
John

[Hibbelharry]

Hi John,
have you enabled acpi and apm in kernel config ? apm loads before acpi so acpi isn't enabled as standard if both are included. "apm=off" as a kernel parameter might be able to do the job. another kernel boot option you may want to try is "pci=acpi" which causes to let acpi do the irq routing if it doesn't do already. take a look at the kernel log to see if it's really enabled while bootup.

greetz
Wilken Haase

[Fuzeron]

i got my USB mouse working thanks to akvalentine, it was the last line i had CorePointer instead of SendCoreEvents

it works now, thanks alot

im going to try to get my modem working this weekend or next week

[John2845]

I'm making some progress now. I finally got /dev/ttyHSF0 to appear. I could never get it to work under the vanilla-sources kernel, even when I compiled in acpi support. So I finally went back to the gentoo-sources kernel and enabled acpi support. This time when I installed the hsflinmodem package /dev/ttyHSF0 showed up and I didn't get the errors I saw originally when I did a dmesg. Also, the hsfserial module loads without a problem now as opposed to my original gentoo-sources configuration without acpi support. In that case, the hsfserial module was always "initializing".

I'm can't get a response from the modem however. I have a script called ppp-on (I think I pulled it from the ppp howto, but I can't remember) in my /etc/ppp directory that works fine with my desktop. When I try to use it on my laptop, nothing happens, not even an error. I'm happy with the progress though. Hopefully, with a little more poking around, I can figure out the problem.

John

[John2845]

Aftger some more playing around, I almost got the modem to work under kde. Today was my first day to use kde, and I haven't decided whether or not I like it. Mainly I use fluxbox, but I'll give kde a chance. Anyway, I used kppp and was able to get a reponse from the modem. Once, I was even able to connect and browse the web for a few minutes, but then everything locked up and I had to reboot. Most of the time, it will dial and then just report "no carrier". A few other times it actually "connect"ed, but got hung when initializing the ppp part. I did notice that when I ran the ppp-on script I mentioned above, that if I pick up the phone I can actually here the modem dialing and handshaking, but it never connects.

Following some of the above advice, I was able to get my USB mouse working. It's so much nicer than the touchpad.

John

[John2845]

I'm posting this from linux using my modem. I would say my modem connects 85% of the time I try. Sometimes it seems to hang up for no reason while I'm connected though. I did two things. First, I booted XP and connected with my modem. Then I went to devices/modem (in XP) and looked at the modem log to see what dial commands it used. In my case it was

AT&FE0V1S0=0&C1&D2+MR=2;+DR=1;+ER=1;W2
ATS7=60M1+ES=3,0,2;+DS=3;+IFC=2,2;X4

I then booted into linux and started kppp and copied these initialization strings into the initialization 1 and initialization 2 blanks in the kppp options. Actually, I think only the first one is being used. I'm not sure what all these strings do, but instead of getting NO CARRIER 90% of the time, I get a CONNECT 90% of the time. Probably, only one (or two) of the options made the difference, but I don't think I'll spend any more time figuring it out.

Next, I was getting lots of complaints by kppp that the device ppp0 wasn't being found, so I added the line "ppp0 ppp_generic" to my /etc/modules.d/ppp file. I'm not sure if this is necessary or not.

John

[John2845]

Sorry, I meant I added

alias ppp0 ppp_generic

to my /etc/modules.d/ppp file.

John