Linux on my Sony Vaio PCG-N505VX

I'm currently running RedHat Linux 7.0 with a custom-patched 2.4.7 kernel on my Sony Vaio laptop. This machine was originally set up with RedHat 6.2 some time ago, but has been maintained and upgraded since. One important detail: I don't have windows installed at all anymore. Makes life interesting when I something isn't supported in Linux. The nice thing is that as of 2.4.x, I've found very little that isn't supported on this machine.

I used the OSS sound drivers with 2.2.x to get the card working. The 2.4.x kernels have built-in support for the Yamaha YMF-744, but I've found it to be worse than the OSS drivers. I've stayed with the built-in drivers for now, but that may change (I still have a valid license for OSS, so....).

Update: With 2.4.7 I've started using ALSA (http://www.alsa-project.org). Much better experience so far, as I can now do hardware mixing. I also am planning on adding the low-latency patches at some point, so maybe that will further improve the overall sound experience.

USB sucked badly in 2.2.x, even with RedHat's backport (or even a manual backport, IIRC. It's perfect in 2.4.x, for me, and I regularly swap devices in and out.

I also have a wireless LAN set up at work and at home. It's a great thing to have. Getting this working was a bit tedious, not so much from the wireless card perspective, but because I had issues getting the Lucent card to talk to a Linksys AP (specifically the WAP11). It's all working with minimal problems, and I'm currently working on a panel applet for the card and a Linux version of the Linksys WAP11 wireless management console. Email me if you'd like a partially working version of either. My main code/technology page will have more info when I get it to a point where I feel comfortable releasing it for general testing/use.

What works?

Here is the list of hardware that I've used or still use with the laptop:

built in:

Intel 440BX / PIIX4 USB controller
Neomagic Corporation MagicMedia 256AV (Video Card)
Yamaha Corporation YMF-744B (Sound Card)
Ricoh CardBus controller
Sony CXD3222 i.LINK controller

Peripherals

Logitech Mouseman Wheel (USB)
NetGear FA510 10/100 CardBus Ethernet Adapter
Linksys NP100 10/100 Ethernet Adapter
3Com/USR 10/100 XJACK Ethernet Adapter
Lucent Orinoco Silver Wireless 802.11b adapter
Sony MSAC-PC2 Memory Stick Adaptor
Archos MiniCD external PCMCIA CD-ROM Drive
Rio500 Portable MP3 Player
Palm Vx (both IR and Serial syncs have worked)

Configuration Details The two kernel config files below should be identical. It's just that people occaisionally get confused as to what to do with a .config file. Both of these were used with kernel 2.4.2 with the IEEE 1394 patch.

Kernel .config file
make xconfig saved xconfig file
IEEE 1394 Patch for Linux 2.4.2
/etc/sysconfig/harddisks for you RedHat folks (I'm running 7.0). This is pretty important, as the hard disk with the N505 does not have any on board buffer to speed up reads. It's essential that we squeeze as much performance out of the drive to make the machine operate reasonably well, especially with only 64 MB of RAM (I can't believe I just said "only" in that phrase...).
I've upgraded PCMCIA-CS to the most recent version as of March 2001.
hotplug RPM to support USB and i-Link (firewire/1394) autoconfig.
Here's my XF86Config-4 file - as you can tell, this is for XFree86-4.0.x. I've gotten two mice working so you can use a USB mouse and the pad at the same time.

Last Modified: Friday, 07-Sep-2001 11:46:05 EDT