near impossible to install slackware 10.2 on sony PCG 984L

salviadud · 11-09-2005, 10:23 PM

well, I can't say I've tried evertying. (I haven't beat up the computer yet). But here's a list of what I've tried to my dismay.

This computer from Sony smells like industrial fraud. It comes built in with windows crappyllenium crappy edition. Or windows millenium if you really need to know.

Anyways, the Bios is a liar. I put up the boot from CD ROM thingy, and I get nothing, Millenium boots up. I try to use the boogmgr disk from the isolinux directory in Slackware, and I get Millenium.

I have been able, in some rare ocassions to slip by a live-cd, namely Slax. I booted up the frodo edition which is only 45 megs big... I think. This box has only 128 megs of ram btw. And used the option

Code:

slax copy2ram

. After that, the cd drive expelled slax and I put in the Slackware installation disc, hoping to do a chroot into the drive. But for some reason, I could not perform a mount, because of the filesystem. Although Im pretty sure its iso9660, no filesystem worked. And I could do nothing?

I believe my only option is to open up this biatch and remove the hard drive, install linux seperately and hope for the best. Still, I believe that having lilo in the MBR will make it worse, and my computer will still be like a freakin' idiot. Any suggestions. I will do anything, it doesn't matter if it involves voodoo dolls. I NEED linux on this thing. My linksys usb wireless adapter can't get dhcp on crappyllenium.

Please help! I still feel like a newbie...

Charred · 11-10-2005, 01:28 AM

What are your specs?

See if you can't deactivate the "boot from internal HD" option in the BIOS; if you can, how does your system respond?

salviadud · 11-10-2005, 01:40 AM

oh, did miss some details.

this sony bios is from hell... check this out. if I make the bios ignore the HD from boot, it will state "No operating system found"....
plus its missing the boot from network option. its horrendous.

its like its hardwired. this needs a physical hack ladies and gentleman.

how do i rip a sony laptop apart. do i just undo the screws?

i've searched for the hard drive... its not near anything. does anyone know?

or better yet, this question answered, and i'll be saved. if i could replicate the computer into taking in a live cd, could i install linux from a samba network, or nfs share?

i still wanna beat it up though. those japanese are evil, its like if the damn laptop was built like a TV, that only runs windows millenium...

god im tired... please help

o yeah, penium 3, 750 mhz, 128 ram, dvd/cdrw drive, and the worst virus of all

windows millenium *i will destoy the computer eventually... this hardware is not blessed by the lord@!!!!

yeah, i took a few drinks toooo. wohoooooooo!

Archangel-13 · 11-10-2005, 01:43 AM

Just my 2 cents, but guessing from the fact that you couldn't mount the disk, it sounds like the Slackware disk might not be good. I would recommend burning another copy, at a slower speed and see if that works.

Otherwise more info about your system may help, also include the output of trying to mount the disk verbosely:

Code:

mount -v -t iso9660 /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom

Charred · 11-10-2005, 11:09 AM

Will you please double-check that model number? I can't find any information on it.

Sony has gone to a very strange (to say the least) model number system; my wife's Vaio has a sticker on the bottom that identifies it as a PCG-6B1L, but there's a badge next to the keyboard listing a model number of PCG-V505EC.

salviadud · 11-10-2005, 11:15 AM

yeah, it is different
PCG-FX220

and i can't give you a verbose message on the mount. this thing will not read live cds anymore. i think it has to do with the bios option "plug and play OS" i dunno... its just freakin' weird.

Charred · 11-10-2005, 01:05 PM

Don't panic, we'll get this sussed out.

Hmmm...
Initial Google returns: Linux on PCG-FX220

Most notable is the first result (http://sonyfx.sourceforge.net/vaio220.html) which tells us that it not only CAN be done, but could be done smoothly in 2002, given the lack of ranting on this page.

This site had some interesting tidbits; most specifically

Quote:

Some reading around and I found out you need to remove the PCMCIA module during installation otherwise you won't be able to boot.

and

Quote:

I had a bad problem with the notebook that wouldn't start the boot process. It stopped ramdomly, sometimes arriving at the Windows boot screen but the problem kept worsening until I couldn't go past seeing the lights switching on!
Then I had a tip from a friend: the problem might have been with the memory... I had added 512Mb of memory to the original configuration. After a few attempts I found out that the memory was OK but a slot on the notebook was causing the malfunctioning if filled.

I got a possible fix from http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/content/topic/11258/

Quote:

BOTTOM LINE FIX: Open the bottom cover with a small phillips screwdriver - it seems that the majority of the failures are coming from memory slot #2 (the one closest to the back of the computer) - buy a short length of heat-shrink wrap ( the kind you would use on about 12ga wire) - cut 3 short lengths of it and place it in between each of the memory chips (the theory is that when you put the cover back on - it pushes the chip down)

I recommend the following plan of action:

Take corrective action against the memory slot problem.
Restore your BIOS to the original configuration (F9, I think).
Double check your BIOS is configured to boot from CD.
Check your install CDs to make sure they're good. Possible problems include checksum errors and ISOs burned at a high speed. Reburn if necessary (I usually use 4x or 8x for ISOs).
Try the install again with the PCMCIA module disabled (parameter is nopcmcia, I think).

Let us know how it goes!

salviadud · 11-11-2005, 01:58 AM

I took out the HD and put it in my ibm 600 thinkpad, which is a lot friendlier.
Installed slackware 10.2 but, to my misfortune, xorgsetup does a terrible job of configuring X.
Where could I get a nice xorg.conf file for this specific model???
I need this gui to work, this is my sister's comp, she doesn't like bash...

Please help me out.

Oh, I'm on Lynx right now btw...

Charred · 11-11-2005, 04:43 AM

http://tuxmobil.org/sony.html
http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/sony.html
http://insue.com/pipermail/linux-son...il/000537.html
ftp://download.intel.com/design/chip...s/29802601.pdf
http://i810fb.sourceforge.net/
http://juljas.net/linux/vaiofx240/

These should get you started.

What's your x doing? Error messages, /var/log/xorgmessages, etc?

salviadud · 11-11-2005, 10:15 AM

Im getting a tiny screen, its at 640x480, this thing should get way better resolutions than that...

Charred · 11-11-2005, 04:32 PM

Post your /etc/xorg.conf.

salviadud · 11-11-2005, 08:26 PM

well, i really wonder why would you like to look at a horrible xorg.conf file, but here goes.

Code:

EndSection

Section "Files"
        RgbPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
        ModulePath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/TTF/"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/CID/"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
        FontPath     "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/"
EndSection

Section "Module"
        Load  "extmod"
        Load  "glx"
        Load  "dri"
        Load  "dbe"
        Load  "record"
        Load  "xtrap"
        Load  "type1"
        Load  "freetype"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Keyboard0"
        Driver      "kbd"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier  "Mouse0"
        Driver      "mouse"
        Option      "Protocol" "auto"
        Option      "Device" "/dev/mouse"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
        Identifier   "Monitor0"
        VendorName   "Monitor Vendor"
        ModelName    "Monitor Model"
EndSection

Section "Device"
        ### Available Driver options are:-
        ### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
        ### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
        ### [arg]: arg optional
        #Option     "NoAccel"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "SWcursor"                  # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ColorKey"                  # <i>
        #Option     "CacheLines"                # <i>
        #Option     "Dac6Bit"                   # [<bool>]
        #Option     "DRI"                       # [<bool>]
        #Option     "NoDDC"                     # [<bool>]
        #Option     "ShowCache"                 # [<bool>]
        #Option     "XvMCSurfaces"              # <i>
        #Option     "PageFlip"                  # [<bool>]
        Identifier  "Card0"
        Driver      "i810"
        VendorName  "Intel Corp."
        BoardName   "82815 CGC [Chipset Graphics Controller]"
        BusID       "PCI:0:2:0"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
        Identifier "Screen0"
        Device     "Card0"
        Monitor    "Monitor0"
DefaultDepth 24
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     1
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     4
        EndSubSection 
SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     8
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     15
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     16
        EndSubSection
        SubSection "Display"
                Viewport   0 0
                Depth     24
        EndSubSection
EndSection

You know, now that you mention that, I think what I should do is just use another kernel that gets that freakin card working.

salviadud · 11-11-2005, 10:26 PM

I just compiled a 2.6.14.2 kernel and got all the hardware detected, BUT, this damn gui fails, I get this ugly tiny screen. if you notice mi monitor section in the xorg.conf file, there is none configured...

if i have to do it manually, how is it done?

Charred · 11-12-2005, 02:53 PM

http://www.slackersbible.org/node/80
http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/xorg-config.xml
http://wiki.x.org/X11R6.8.2/doc/xorgcfg.1.html
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO.../x-config.html

If you need more help than that, lemme get back to my box and I'll help you out.

salviadud · 11-12-2005, 03:54 PM

I got it workiiiiiiiing!

I was running xorgsetup all the time, and what I did was I ran xorgconfig instead, worked like a charm...

thanx a lot for the help, those wikis helped me out lots!