Installation problems - Sony pcg-c1f and pcg grx316mp

Laconic · 12-15-2006, 08:19 PM

I'm not sure which forum i should post this in but this seems the best choice so here goes...

I've been trying to find an installation method for any distro that will work for either of these laptops:

Laptop 1 - PCG C1F - http://www.vaio-link.com/specificati...tions.asp?l=en

"Installation

See Kim's page for more info. If you don't have a CD-ROM you can install Linux like I did. Prepare a Linux system on another computer and use Windows to copy a tar file to the Vaio. Then boot Linux with a floppy, shrink the Windows file system (as described on Kim's page), make a new file system on the new partition and untar Linux. You can boot Linux from floppy if the whole system is on only one disk (kernel and initrd)."
(from www.remote.org/jochen/projects/vaio/)

I'm new to this so that just isn't anywhere near enough information to help me out!

Details:

Upgraded to 40gb HDD (HDD removal is a pain - screw heads messed up and requires entire laptop to be dismantled - i want to avoid this)
pcmcia cd-rom drive (model no: pscd-740?)
external usb floppy (model sony pcga-ufd1)

Running OEM win98 happily. Wireless/Wired networking available via PCMCIA. External CD drive will work in 98 but i can't boot from it without an appropriate floppy boot disk.

I want to create a dual boot system on this machine.
As it only has 64MB ram i thought i should try some distros that google says work well on minimal hardware.

I've tried copying DSL to the hard drive and using loadlin to boot it as here:

www.damnsmalllinux.org/talk/node/191

but that didn't work. I dont know what options are required in the option.txt as i can't boot from the cd to find them...

I've also tried a slackware installation. I used the bare.i boot floppy but as soon as i change to the first root disk the process fails and there is a kernel panic...

I assume this is because the bios allows booting from the usb but the usb floppy doesnt work after the boot process starts...

I can access the HDD. If anyone has a bright idea how to install without using multiple floppy disks or the cd drive that would be my first choice.

If not, a method that boots from floppy to allow install from the pcmcia CD drive would be next best choice.

If not... Any method that works!

The second laptop - PCG GRX316MP - http://www.vaio-link.com/specificati...serie=-1&m=610

Running windows XP home.
Again this machine has no internal floppy drive. There is also some issue with the CD drive that means it has trouble reading some discs, and i cannot boot from CD.

If i could solve that problem, installation would be a hell of a lot easier. If not, same question - any ideas on how i can get a working distro to dual boot on this machine?

I'm open to suggestions on what distro to install. I want to do my day to day browsing, email, watch dvds and general programming - nothing too taxing.

I've got access to another XP machine, a laptop that will boot from DSL or Puppy live CD's happily and, of course, the net.

Any ideas?

chrisortiz · 12-16-2006, 10:20 AM

Quote:

There is also some issue with the CD drive that means it has trouble reading some discs, and i cannot boot from CD

(laptop 2)
when i run into this it usually means the drive needs cleaned or replaced. If you buy a more "reflective" cd-r you should be able to get ur vaio to read it. They usually are usually gold, but i'm not 100% sure.

Quote:

I've also tried a slackware installation. I used the bare.i boot floppy but as soon as i change to the first root disk the process fails and there is a kernel panic...

(laptop 1)
could you explain this in more detail? floppy drives are notrious for r/w errors when they aren't used often. I have to clean mine every time i use it. (once in a blue moon)

it could also be that bare.i is not apropriate image for you laptop. I believe there is a pcmcia.i

Laconic · 12-16-2006, 11:11 AM

I used rawwrite to write bare.i, install.1 install.2 and pcmcia to floppies.

I booted up the laptop, with the usb floppy drive attached, and the system started to boot off the bare.i floppy. After a while it asks for the next floppy, so i popped out bare, and put in install.1.

At this point the usb floppy drive seems to stop working - the led that normally flashes when it's reading does not do so, there is no noise from the drive and no sign it's attempting to read the disk at all.

The installation then stops and and error message along the lines of "kernel panic can't load fs on 2.00 errno = 2" comes up. That error message is from memory i'm afraid, so not 100% accurate but you get the idea.

I believe the pcmcia disk comes in later in the install process.

Laconic · 12-18-2006, 12:29 PM

Hi again.

I managed to install on the C1F by removing the hard drive (brute force on the messed up screw eventually got there) and installing slackware from cd in another laptop. It now dual boots quite happily back in the C1F. There are still some issues (and i'm sure i'll find more) but the main one is the strange resolution of the display.

The specs from sony's site are:

Video Chipset Neomagic MagicMedia 256AV
Video Memory 2.5 MB SGRAM
Display 8.9" TFT Ultra Wide XGA 1024x480

I've googled around and found a lot of different xorg.conf files but i havent been able to edit mine to get the 1024x480 resolution to work.

Any help would really be appreciated.

(On the GRX i've bought a new cd drive off ebay and i'm waiting for it to arrive....)

chrisortiz · 12-19-2006, 02:03 PM

open up your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and look for something like
Section "Device"
Identifier "Card1"
Driver "i810"
the driver is what i'm interested in. please post it

do you have any errors in /var/log/x11.0.log?

also could you do lspci and post the output here

sorry for all the vague questions, but with any luck we will find something anomalous

Laconic · 12-19-2006, 06:51 PM

At the moment it's all set to defaults i believe. I'll check it and post the results here when i get the chance though. As i said, i'm pretty sure it's defaults and not set to my display... hence the problem!

I got that new drive today so i've been installing on the other laptop all day. Pretty happy so far.

Laconic · 12-20-2006, 07:15 PM

I'm very happy. "Everything" works now on both machines.

In the end i used settings from http://www.linickx.com/files/Sony.xorg.conf.txt and they seem to work for the C1F. If this is a horrible way of fixing the problem, please tell me.

Code:

Section "Modes"
	Identifier "MyModes"
	#Original Mode Line
	Modeline "1024x480" 65 1024 1032 1176 1344 480 491 493 525 -hsync -vsync
	# Others I found off google that might work.
#	Modeline "1024x480"     85      1024 1032 1152 1360     768 784 787 823
#       Modeline "1024x480" 65.00 1024 1032 1176 1244 480 488 494 563 -hsync -vsync
#       Modeline "1024x480" 65.00 1024 1032 1176 1344 480 491 493 525 -hsync -vsync
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Videocard0"
	Driver      "neomagic"
	VendorName  "Videocard vendor"
	BoardName   "NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV (laptop/notebook)"
	Option	    "externDisp" ""
	Option	    "internDisp" ""
	#VideoRam        2560
        Option  "override_validate_mode"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Videocard0"
	Monitor    "Monitor0"
	DefaultDepth     16
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
		Modes    "1024x480"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

chrisortiz · 12-21-2006, 12:41 PM

looks fine to me.