Blank Slate - Sony VAIO PCG-FX200

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Sony VAIO PCG-FX200

Last updated: 11 June 2002

This page describes my experiences with the VAIO PCG-FX200 on Mandrake 8.0 and Red Hat 7.2. I've since switched to Mac, so in all reality I don't really care about this page anymore, but I'll leave it up in case someone finds it useful somehow. (I'm hoping, though, that things have progressed since 2002.)

Links
Install
Video
Audio
PCMCIA
Ethernet
Modem
DVD
USB
Firewire
APM
Sony PowerPak buttons
Problems
Verdict

The model I bought was custom-built from Sony's website. Here are the specs:

Celeron (Coppermine) 700MHz processor
128 megs RAM
14.1" XGA screen (TFT)
Intel 815EM graphics (AGP)
Intel 815EM audio
15 gig hard drive (IBM-DJSA-220)
8x DVD-ROM drive (QSI DVD-ROM SDR-081)
Removable 3.5" floppy disk drive
Integrated EtherExpress PRO/100
Integrated Conexant/Rockwell Winmodem (SoftFlex 56K)
Firewire (i.LINK/IEEE 1394)
NTSC video out
PCMCIA
Two USB ports
Serial port, parallel port, monitor port
Microphone and headphone jacks
Lithium-ion battery

Links

If you are aware of any other helpful links, please let me know and I'll add them here.

My Linux page -- has configuration files and various logfiles (mostly output from /proc)
Linux on Laptops
Sonystyle VAIO -- official Sony page
VAIO Computer Support -- support page for the PCG-FX200
Linux-sony mailing list
Sony Programmable I/O Control Device Driver
Linux on Sony Vaio PCG-FX240

Install

I'd been using Mandrake 8.0 for a few months when I got the laptop, so that was my first choice of distribution. I put the bootable CD in and started up the laptop. When Mandrake's install program tried to autodetect the PCMCIA system, however, it froze. I tried again three times. No luck. I tried the textmode install instead, and found that I got a kernel panic (which is what caused the freeze). I read somewhere that entering NOPCMCIA=yes as a boot option in the install would disable PCMCIA and let the install continue. I tried that and lo and behold, it didn't work. After a few more tries I gave up and tried installing Red Hat 7.1. It installed fine, at least as far as I could tell. I set up a few things and then saw on some site that entering expert noauto at the install prompt ("boot: ") might work. So I did that (boot: expert noauto) with the Mandrake install and it actually worked.

The only other problem with the install was that when it found my video card, something went haywire and most of the screen became corrupted (big chunks of randomly colored pixels). Luckily I was able to hit enter a few times and get through the install, rebooting in without a problem. I can't remember if Mandrake automatically detected the right video card or not -- I think it found a Savage card instead, so I might have had to run Xconfigurator from the console when I booted up for the first time. Or maybe not.

Update: I recently decided that I was sick of my Internet connection dying all the time, so I switched from Mandrake 8.0 to Red Hat 7.2. I haven't really regretted the change. (It's very nice having a connection that doesn't die after downloading 500 kilobytes. :)) I had no problems installing, at all.

Video

The graphics chip is an Intel 815 and seems to work fine with XFree86 4.0.3. I haven't tried it with XFree86 3.3.6. It runs at 1024x768x24 without any problems. The screen is very clear and quite nice. The Fn-F7 combination for changing the brightness of the LCD isn't supported, though. (I haven't really looked into this -- if someone knows of a way to change the brightness while in Linux, please let me know.)

XFree86 acceleration seems to work fine. There isn't any 3D acceleration support that I'm aware of, however.

Red Hat update: XFree86 4.1.0 works fine.

Audio

The onboard audio (another Intel 815 chip, an AC97, I believe) was flaky at first. I'd run XMMS and be able to play music fine, but if I switched to another audio program, the sound support would die and I'd have to reboot before it would come back.

Thank heavens for ALSA. ALSA support is included with the Mandrake kernel, so I just had to make a few changes to /etc/modules.conf. First, I commented out this line:

    # alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio

Then I added the following lines:

    # ALSA portion
    alias char-major-116 snd
    options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1
    alias snd-card-0 snd-card-intel8x0
    options snd-card-intel8x0 snd_index=0

    # OSS portion
    alias char-major-14 soundcore
    alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
    alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
    alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
    alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
    alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
    alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

For some reason the OSS part of ALSA wasn't initialized on boot with this, so I added the following to my /etc/rc.d/rc.local:

    /sbin/insmod snd-pcm-plugin
    /sbin/insmod snd-mixer-oss
    /sbin/insmod snd-pcm-oss

Now, ALSA doesn't quite work. When I run amixer, I get an error saying "The ALSA sound driver was not detected in this system." The OSS legacy support works great, though, and that's good enough for me.

ALSA by default mutes all the channels on initialization, so you have to unmute them yourself if you want to hear any sound. You don't want to have to do this manually, of course, unless you like wasting time. :) There are a number of ways to do this, so find one that you like. I ran aumix, set the volume to where I wanted it, saved the settings (there's a Save command in both the console and the GUI versions), copied my resulting ~/.aumixrc to /etc/aumixrc, and put the following in my /etc/rc.d/rc.local after the abovementioned ALSA lines:

    /usr/bin/aumix -L

The -L option loads the mixer settings from /etc/aumixrc. And it works fine. I haven't had a problem since.

Red Hat update: The sound was flaky under Red Hat at first, just like with Mandrake. I'm guessing it's an OSS problem (or a hardware incompatibility). I installed ALSA (it doesn't come with Red Hat, so I downloaded the source from the ALSA site and compiled it). It works fine (it's an intel8x0, by the way). If you're using ALSA 0.9, you'll need to change the two instances of "snd-card-intel8x0" to "snd-intel8x0" in the /etc/modules.conf above. amixer does indeed work now. I haven't had any problems since.

PCMCIA

PCMCIA took the longest to get working, and even now I'm not quite sure it's working the way it should. :) When I first installed, Mandrake didn't set up PCMCIA (which was good because it would have frozen if it had). I tried getting it to work with the 2.4.3 distro kernel, but it didn't work, so I downloaded 2.4.7 (which was the latest at the time). Having installed that, including the kernel-pcmcia-cs RPM, I did the following:

1. I edited /etc/sysconfig/pcmcia so it looked like this:

    PCMCIA=yes
    PCIC=i82365
    PCIC_OPTS="pci_irq_list=5,9"
    CORE_OPTS=
    CARDMGR_OPTS=-f

The Ricoh controller used wants to use IRQs 5 and 9, and it does not like ISA IRQs. It took a long time to figure that out. :)

2. I added the following two lines to /etc/pcmcia/config.opts:

    include memory 0xf4102000-0xf4108fff
    include port 0x3000-0x3fff

How did I get these numbers, you might ask? It took a while, I'll admit. But eventually I figured it out. To get the memory addresses, I ran cat /proc/pci and got this:

    Bus  1, device   2, function  0:
      CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 128).
        Master Capable.  Latency=168.  Min Gnt=128.Max Lat=7.
        Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4102000 [0xf4102fff].
    Bus  1, device   2, function  1:
      CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (#2) (rev 128).
        Master Capable.  Latency=168.  Min Gnt=128.Max Lat=7.
        Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4103000 [0xf4103fff].

In Windows, I checked the PCMCIA controller in the System section of the Control Panel and found that it was around 0xf4108000, so I included the whole range just in case. To get the port numbers, I ran lspci -vx. For some reason it doesn't produce the right output anymore, but I got the numbers from the I/O window: lines. 0x3000 to 0x3fff covered all of the addresses given, so that's why I chose it.

Now, it still complains about not being able to find an IRQ (see the message below, taken from dmesg or /var/log/messages), but that doesn't matter since it's using the PCI IRQs instead.

    Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.27
      kernel build: 2.4.7-13mdk #1 Thu Aug 9 16:03:41 CEST 2001
      options:  [pci] [cardbus] [apm]
    Intel PCIC probe: <4>PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device
        01:02.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
    PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin B of device 01:02.1. Please try using
        pci=biosirq.

      Ricoh RL5C476 rev 80 PCI-to-CardBus at slot 01:02, mem 0xf4102000
        host opts [0]: [serial irq] [io 3/6/1] [mem 3/6/1] [pci irq 5] 
                       [lat 168/176] [bus 2/5]
        host opts [1]: [serial irq] [io 3/6/1] [mem 3/6/1] [pci irq 9]
                       [lat 168/176] [bus 6/9]
        ISA irqs (default) = 3,4,5,7,10,11,12 PCI status changes

Before I found the port numbers (0x3000-0x3fff), when I put a card in, it would give me a low beep and then a high beep, and if I looked in /var/log/messages it would say something like cs: anonymous memory size (that's a paraphrase, by the way, since I can't quite remember what it was :)). I still sometimes get that, though rebooting seems to fix the problem.

When I insert a card (a Dell/Megahertz 56k modem), dmesg gives me this:

    cs: memory probe 0xf4102000-0xf4108fff: excluding 0xf4102000-0xf4103fff
    cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x3c0-0x3df 0x4d0-0x4d7
    cs: IO port probe 0x03e0-0x04cf: clean.
    cs: IO port probe 0x04d8-0x04ff: clean.
    cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff: clean.
    cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
    cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
    cs: IO port probe 0x3000-0x3fff: clean.
    ttyS01 at port 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A

The first line makes me wonder if things are really set up right, since it's apparently excluding the very memory addresses it's supposed to use.

Now, PCMCIA does work, but with both of the modems that I tried, everything slows down a lot when I insert the card. The 56k modem I used wouldn't download data faster than 700 or 800 bps, even though it said it was connected at 32 kbps (which is still slow, since my other modems connect at 44 kbps on the same phone line). Once I've connected to my ISP with Kppp, Konqueror (my web browser of choice nowadays) takes five or six times as long to start up as usual. I haven't looked very far into this, though it is somewhat a nuisance.

Red Hat update: I don't have any PCMCIA cards, so I can't tell if it's working or not.

Ethernet

The integrated network card (an Intel EtherExpress Pro/100) worked from the start, and I haven't had any problems with it at all. Here's what I get from dmesg:

    eepro100.c:v1.09j-t 9/29/99 Donald Becker
    eepro100.c: $Revision: 1.36 $ 2000/11/17 Modified by Andrey V. Savochkin
    PCI: Found IRQ 9 for device 01:08.0
    eth0: Intel Corporation 82801BA(M) Ethernet, 08:00:46:29:4C:67, 
          I/O at 0x3000, IRQ 9.
      Board assembly 000000-000, Physical connectors present: RJ45
      Primary interface chip i82555 PHY #1.
      General self-test: passed.
      Serial sub-system self-test: passed.
      Internal registers self-test: passed.
      ROM checksum self-test: passed (0x04f4518b).

Red Hat update: No problems whatsoever.

Modem

The modem is a Conexant/Rockwell Winmodem (SoftFlex 56K) and wasn't supported for a while. But recently MBSI came out with a beta driver and, much to my pleasure, it actually works. :) You can get it at http://www.mbsi.ca/hsflinux/. I downloaded and installed the RPM and it worked fine.

Original Comments: Alas, the modem is a Conexant/Rockwell Winmodem (SoftFlex 56K) and it doesn't look like it will ever work under Linux. A company in France (Olitec) has binary-only drivers for their modems which use the same chipset, but the drivers are for the 2.2 kernel and didn't work on my machine (they complained about not being able to find the modem).

Linmodems.org has a table showing supported Winmodems, and for the Conexant/Rockwell modems, there are two different categories -- HCF and HSF. The modem with the FX200 is the HSF, according to the Windows Control Panel. Apparently the HSFs are the only ones supported at all under Linux, so there is some hope, although I wouldn't count on it. (If you're able to write a working driver for this modem, please let me know! :)) Until then, you'll have to use a PCMCIA modem.

Red Hat update: Works fine.

DVD

Works pretty well. MPlayer rocks. :) There's a slight sync problem, but it's easily fixable with the - and + keys. I think MPlayer drops some frames, but DVDs are still quite viewable. (DVDs play very smoothly on Windows, by the way, so that's always an option if Linux playback isn't up to par.)

USB

The USB doesn't work out of the box because of an IRQ conflict. (The controller wants IRQ 10 when it's supposed to want 9.) To fix it, go to the URL below and download vaioUSB.patch. It's meant for the 2.4.17 kernel. If you're not able to patch it, just look at the file (/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/pci-irq.c) and make the change (it's near line 590, though of course the exact number will vary depending on which kernel version you have).

After I patched the kernel (patch /usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/pci-irq.c vaioUSB.patch), I recompiled and USB worked fine. I recently bought a Wacom Graphire tablet, so I've finally been able to test this. It seems a little finicky, but that could easily be a tablet problem, not a USB problem. I don't have any other USB devices at the moment so I can't check this.

Jan Slupski's USB on Sony VAIO PCG-FX240 page
Linux USB

Firewire

I have no Firewire devices, so I can't tell if it's working or not.

APM

The battery status isn't working. Nor can I suspend or really do anything else like that. At least the laptop turns off okay. :) Apparently ACPI works (albeit fairly limited at present), but I don't really dare to try it. Too dangerous -- one mistake and the laptop could poof into flames. :)

Sony PowerPak buttons

The FX200 has three "PPK" buttons between the keyboard and the screen, and supposedly they're programmable. I have no idea if they work under Linux, though.

Problems

A few days after I got the notebook, the hard drive started making noises. I can't quite describe them -- they're not regular, although they do happen often, and they sound almost like a hard drive access with an extra churning sound to it. It doesn't seem to be a real problem yet, but I don't feel quite safe and so I'll be making regular backups for the foreseeable future. It also makes an occasional twanging sound, like something is snapping into place (I'll have a recording of this soon as well). Scary. :)

Also, from time to time the fan makes a whirring noise for about thirty seconds. It doesn't sound bad, but I don't recall it making the noise when I first got it, so that makes me wonder. Hopefully it's nothing.

I've started getting the following message on bootup. It happens quite infrequently, and so far a reboot has always fixed it, but it makes me worry.

Loading linux...............
Uncompressing Linux...

crc error

-- System halted

I found the following bit of information at Telsa Gwynne's diary, in the February 27th, 2002 entry. That explains why my battery doesn't last as long as it used to...

Remembered to remove the new battery from the Vaio before it too died in the same fashion as the old one. Thank you, Sony. For those who don't know: leave your battery in whilst the machine is connected to the wall socket and eventually your battery will retain charge for just long enough to boot up, to log in, and to type startx. So now I have a new battery and a long time of attempting to drain the old one totally flat, recharge it, drain it flat, recharge it, drain it flat.. (rinse and repeat).

FIXED: Another problem, which is probably a Mandrake problem rather than a Sony one, is that my Internet connection (via Ethernet) stalls if I try to download more than 100-200k. I think the problem lies in a configuration file lost somewhere in the /etc mountain, but I haven't yet had time to find it.

Red Hat update: the Ethernet stalling problem was fixed when I switched to Red Hat 7.2. I've now had the laptop for nine months and haven't had any serious problems, although the hard drive still makes noises. From time to time it has acted oddly -- freezing at the BIOS password screen, for instance -- but hopefully those are freak events. I'm praying the hard drive lasts, since it would take around 10 weeks to get the laptop to a Sony repair center and back, which is a big chunk of time.

Verdict

I used to think my VAIO was a piece of junk (see the below paragraph), but now I'm thinking that it's actually better than I give it credit for. The display is quite nice, DVD playback is almost perfect, the hard drive sound doesn't seem to be a big issue (it hasn't died on me yet), and virtually everything works as it should. My one complaint is that the battery life isn't the greatest (an hour), and it's certainly not the 2-3 hours advertised. I was too hard on Sony. Yes, there are occasional problems (freezing, CRC errors on boot, etc.), but I'm beginning to suspect they're software bugs and not hardware problems.

5-14-02 update: the machine has been freezing more and more these past few days. I suspect it is indeed a hardware issue -- the last time it froze, I plugged it back into the wall (I'd been running on battery) and the battery light remained on (i.e. it was saying I hadn't plugged it into the wall). When I turned it off (by holding the power button down for five seconds) and turned it back on the battery light stayed off. Lesson learned: make backups often. :)

Original Comments: I would never buy a Sony laptop again. It's nice, but the low price came with somewhat low quality. Every day I worry that my laptop will die on me. (These aren't just idle worries, either; the noises are not assuring at all.) I would much rather fork out the extra money and have a safer laptop that won't flake out on me. I can't say how good Sony's support is, since I haven't really used it yet. (I'm hoping I won't have to.) I wanted to remove the Windows partition, but I can't in case I have to send the laptop in, since Sony doesn't support Linux. If you're planning on getting a laptop, get one from somewhere that supports Linux. It'll make life a lot easier.