sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Thomas Jensen <vaio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,
I've stumpled upon an alternative method to activating the Nvidia card, 
which I would like to share with you. Maybe it can be used for creating 
a better method of activating the card, than the current ones.

It happend when I was trying to install Mac OS X (Snow Leopard) on my 
Vaio, using the Rebel EFI from Psystar.com. To install it, you have to 
boot on a CD containing the Rebel EFI and then insert the Mac OS X dvd 
and the installation starts.

On my computer, the installation process fails after a minute or so and 
freezes the computer, with the apple logo on the screen. Now this is 
where the "magic" begins. Only way to get out of the freeeze is to press 
and hold the power button and then the computer shuts down. But when you 
turn it on again, the Stamina - Speed button lights up, instantly and 
stays lit when booting into Kubuntu, and the Nvidia card is activatet 
and as far as I can see, the Intel card is shut off, it is nowhere to be 
found in lspci and sudo lshw, check this out:

thomas@thomas-vaio:~$ glxinfo | grep ren
direct rendering: Yes
OpenGL renderer string: GeForce 9300M GS/PCI/SSE2
  GL_NV_depth_buffer_float, GL_NV_conditional_render, GL_NV_depth_clamp,
  GL_NV_vertex_program3, GL_NVX_conditional_render,
thomas@thomas-vaio:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory 
Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI 
Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network 
Connection (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI 
Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio 
Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express 
Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express 
Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express 
Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI 
Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI 
Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M-E LPC Interface Controller 
(rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI 
Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller 
(rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G98 [GeForce 9300M 
GS] (rev a1)
06:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100
0b:04.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
0b:04.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller 
(rev 04)
0b:04.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro 
Host Adapter (rev 21)
0b:04.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host 
Adapter (rev 11)

*-pci:0
           description: PCI bridge
           product: Mobile 4 Series Chipset PCI Express Graphics Port
           vendor: Intel Corporation
           physical id: 1
           bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
           version: 07
           width: 32 bits
           clock: 33MHz
           capabilities: pci pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
           configuration: driver=pcieport-driver
           resources: irq:24 ioport:7000(size=4096) 
memory:d2000000-d4ffffff ioport:c0000000(size=268435456)
         *-display
              description: VGA compatible controller
              product: G98 [GeForce 9300M GS]
              vendor: nVidia Corporation
              physical id: 0
              bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
              version: a1
              width: 64 bits
              clock: 33MHz
              capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom
              configuration: driver=nvidia latency=0
              resources: irq:16 memory:d4000000-d4ffffff 
memory:c0000000-cfffffff(prefetchable) memory:d2000000-d3ffffff


The downside is, that when you shutdown Kubuntu, the Nvidia card is 
deactivatet again and you have to start the Mac OS X installation again.

A funny thing is, that if you boot into Vista after the failed Max OS X 
installation, it can't find any graphic cards what so ever, which 
results in a very low resolution. You actually have to boot into Kubuntu 
and do a shutdown, before you can boot into windows. I've even tried 
taking out the battery to turn of the Nvidia card, but no, it just stays 
activated until you do a nice shutdown from Kubuntu :o)

I hope you can use this for something :o)

Regards
Thomas