Hi Doug,
> I see that this reply is late. Sorry. I am usually notified about
> posts when I get an e-mail, and I didn't get one about your post. Just
> happened to be reviewing my previous posts.
No problem... I haven't had much time to play over the holidays anyway ;-)
> My notebook is a VGN-N38Z. A very nice machine, lean and mean in the
> resources (except for the non-standard sd card reader and the usual
> winmodem that all PCs still feature).
I ended up with an AW11Z (the AR71ZU wasn't available any more). Just
as your notebook it's a really nice piece of gear.
The SDCard reader is a supported Ricoh R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro.
Garrett's driver attaches fine and rmformat list a media. I have an old
512MB mini-SD with adaptor, which works fine with the preinstalled OS.
Solaris fails to read the card though. Gives me an
Jan 5 13:19:57 akuma genunix: [ID 408114 kern.info] /pci at 0,0/pci8086,2448
at 1e/pci104d,9040 at 3,1/sdcard at 0 (sdcard0) online
Jan 5 13:19:57 akuma scsi: [ID 193665 kern.info] sd4 at sdcard0: target 0 lun 0
Jan 5 13:19:57 akuma genunix: [ID 936769 kern.info] sd4 is /pci at
0,0/pci8086,2448 at 1e/pci104d,9040 at 3,1/sdcard at 0/disk at 0,0
Jan 5 13:19:57 akuma scsi: [ID 107833 kern.warning] WARNING: /pci at
0,0/pci8086,2448 at 1e/pci104d,9040 at 3,1/sdcard at 0/disk at 0,0 (sd4):
Jan 5 13:19:57 akuma sd_get_write_cache_enabled: Mode Sense returned invalid
block descriptor length
So any hint on this would be nice.
> However, I have not been able to
> enable VT-x on the BIOS setup and Sony support (www.vaio-link.com)
> told me it was a management decision of Sony not to support VT-x in
> this notebook. Other sources I found on the internet say that no Vaio
> will ever feature VT-x.
I have a few open tickets with Sony support. They seem rather clueless
though. (I blogged a little about running OpenSolaris and the issues on
http://phaedrus77.blogspot.com/)
The question how to enable VT-x on a Vaio is still open. I'm just
waiting what the support guys come up with this time...
> Other comments: I have seen an HP notebook be able to control display
> brightness and volume with the Fn keys, while my Vaio doesn't support
> it. How about that?
The Acer Ferrari was able to dim the backlight without a running OS. All
handled by BIOS and co. The Vaio is different. I found out that the lcd
backlight is controlled via the graphics card (mine has a NVidia 9600M GT).
I'm currently trying to get this to work under OpenSolaris. For Linux there
is Smartdimmer (NVClock) which can dim the backlight. So I try to port this.
> So, if you find a nice notebook that doesn't feature a lot of
> unsupported hardware (unsupported hardware only wastes battery) and
> supports VT-x without sophisticated hacks, go for it, and then post it
> here so that I can go and get one for me too. Walk away from Sony if
> you don't want Vista.
Beside the backlight control, VT-x and not waking up from Suspend-to-ram
the AW11Z simply works with OpenSolaris.
With the limited choice on manufacturers and very little time to spend the
money the Vaio wasn't a bad choice I'd say.
> The most annoying is that the processor in my N38Z is the T5500
> stepping L which happens to support VT-x, so I am not using it now
> because Sony doesn't let me have it on a 1000 euro notebook.
VT-x would indeed be cool to have. Though right now extending battery
runtime is first on my list ;-)
Bernd
--
This message posted from opensolaris.org
