Re: Installation on Sony Vaio VGN-A417[S|M]: Opinions
--- Lennart Sorensen <lsorense@csclub.uwaterloo.ca>
wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 09, 2005 at 08:10:57AM +0100,
> j.a.m.e.s@btinternet.com wrote:
[ ... ]
> >
> > The laptop in question is a Sony Vaio VGN-A417S
> and
> > has a 100Gb SATA harddisk (HTS541080G9SA00) on the
> > ICH6 chipset . I believe the installer has
> struggled
> > with these in the past:
> >
>
http://lists.debian.org/debian-boot/2005/07/msg00758.html
>
> So far my experience with SATA in laptops is on a
> Dell. It basically
> doesn't work because they run it in combined mode at
> all time, which
> means you can access either the HD or the CD but not
> both. Enabling
> SATA atapi support in the kernel (not yet complete)
> gives access to both
> but means compiling your own kernel.
>
> 2.4 kernel does seem able to at least access both at
> once using the
> older ide driver although of course without DMA.
>
> > The graphics card is an ATI Mobility Radeon X600.
>
> Well same laptop above has an ATI X something, and I
> recently read that
> the latest CVS of X.org may actually work on it.
> ATI's drivers did not,
> and XFree86 certainly didn't either.
>
> If you want something that just works you want:
> - intel or nvidia video not ati.
> - no sata.
> - intel or nvidia chipset not ati.
> - intel wireless (one of the few that have decent
> linux support). Some
> others can be made to work with ndiswrapper, and a
> few chips also have
> native drivers although they are almost never
> actually built in to a
> laptop.
>
> > The most detailed laptop specs I could find are:
> > http://tinyurl.com/btl54
>
> Hmm, I personally would never buy somethign where
> the video chip steals
> system memory to help out it's own puny amount of
> video ram. The memory
> bus doesn't need extra load, and you have better
> things to use your
> system ram for.
>
> Funny how their specs could be read as 'this laptop
> has no harddisk' :)
> It is never mentioned as far as I can tell.
>
> > Could anyone tell me how easy it is likely to be
> to
> > use the official NetInst for Etch or Sarge on this
> > laptop? I think it would be wise for me to stay
> away
> > from a daily NetInst release.
>
> With the hardware list you gave, it will most likely
> be very hard to get
> it installed.
>
> Len Sorensen
>
Thank you very much for the advice - most helpful. I'm
now looking at other laptops which avoid ATI graphics
cards and SATA harddisks.
Whilst the former (i.e. ATI) is easily avoided, SATA
harddisks seem to be in all the high spec laptops
these days.
For example, the Toshiba Qosmio G20 series also have
dual SATA disks, but at least they stick with Nvidia
cards:
http://tinyurl.co.uk/rvgi
Could anyone hazard a very vague guess as to when one
of the working snapshots of Etch will have the
necessary SATA Atapi support for these laptops?
Regards,
James.
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