Re: Installation on Sony Vaio VGN-A417[S|M]: Opinions
On Mon, Sep 12, 2005 at 11:26:03PM +0100, j.a.m.e.s@btinternet.com wrote:
> 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
If the optical drive is not SATA _and_ the bios allows you to put the
SATA controller into native mode rather than combined mode (required to
make it possible to install windows without having a floppy drive to
load drives) then it should have a decent chance of working. So far my
experience shows that this is not an option on Dell laptops. I had to
install with 2.4 kernel (where ide-generic seems able to tolerate
things, while 2.6 saw sata and tried to use it and lost the dvd drive),
and then use a 2.6 kernel with the not yet finished SATA ATAPI support
enabled, after which it could find all the drives.
> 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?
Well when SATA ATAPI support is complete, those laptops should work much
better, although it appears to me that laptops will also work better the
day windows can install on the SATA drives in native mode instead of
PATA emulation mode.
Len Sorensen
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