sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[Adam Hill <sidepipeuk@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 6 August 2010 10:54, Fabrizio Giustina <fgiust@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>
> >        I didn't even try the BIOS mod because I still want to run Windows
> (
> > Visual Pinball is brilliant :)
>
>
> mh, I never thought that enabling the static switch could break
> windows... it shouldn't, also because you can get back to the soft
> switch at any time by changing the bios option, isn't it?
>
> Ahhh, no, it doesn't "break" Windows as such, I just don't want to have to
change BIOS settings every time and also want dynamic switching to still
work in Windows. I'm just lazy :).



> Thanks also for the info about the reboot patch, I'll try it soon...
> Another related question, I am pretty new to this soft-switch mess and
> I didn't really understood a point: do you have any idea on which kind
> of magic is bundled in old kernels to makes the switch work? Did
> anybody ever tried in finding it and see if the code can be merged to
> a newer kernel?
>

I haven't seen any, no. I think that people are assuming that Sony put
something in the BIOS to detect when an OS not capable of switching using
ACPI calls and go to static switch mode. Now Linux has more advanced ACPI
stuff, I think that the trick fails, so selecting some ACPI boot option may
work, but may make something else not work as well. The change seems to have
happened some time around 2.6.29/30, you may find someone who had found the
exact version and hence find the commit which caused it.

Adam.



>
> thanks
> fabrizio
>