sony-vaio-z-series team mailing list archive

[r1k0 <erick@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

List, Sébastien,

Thank you for the feedback.

Facing issues with the nvidia GPUs is actually what I was fearing the most.
I guess Sony will never provide any bios update to let the user disable the
intel card.

If only I could use the nvidia GPU would still make my day (I don't really
care about the Intel card, as I bought the device for everything but that
optimus crap).

Luckily, I bought the device 2 days ago, so I still have 10 days to fiddle
around otherwise I'm just going to bring it back and get a 2KE ticket.
Sadly, all other devices are not really attractive compared to the vpcz13. I
guess I'll wait until a vpcz13 alike goes out *without* the
dualGPU-optimus-crap-of-the-year.
I'll just erase the bootloader and bring it back passing my self for someone
who don't know anything in computers: that's the best I get my "revenge"
against sony for this locked-down device.

If I find anything worth (which I really doubt) I drop a mail here.

Regards,

erick

ps: out of curiosty, I could even open up the laptop and just "push the
right button" to make the intel hardware not recognized anymore but I'm sure
it's not that simple.

On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 4:44 PM, Sébastien Roy <roys@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>wrote:

> On 2010-10-25 03:08, r1k0 wrote:
> > Hi List,
> >
> > I recently took possession of a vaio vpcz13m9e and I was wondering if I
> > could hope succeeding in having the nvidia/intel GPUs to work using the
> > feedback from this ML because I see people have vpcz11 and 12 mostly and
> > googling around shows very few (if not none) linux users having this
> > device (vpcz13).
> > I use Gentoo and I got the system up and running using vesa so far.
>
> I own a VPCZ1390S (canadian model).
>
> It seems impossible to solve the gpu switching problem. First, the
> firmware (version R3030C3 in my case) can't be patched to make the
> "advancde menu" appear. The EFI booting trick (see
>
> http://feature-enable.blogspot.com/2009/07/enable-vt-on-insydeh2o-based-sony-vaio.html
> ) does not work at all.
>
> As far as the other trick (acpi_osi="!Windows 2006"), it does not seem
> to work at all either. It seems the VPCZ13* are not intended to run
> vista, so the bios probably does not care about "vista frienfly" gpu
> switching.
>
> Basically, I am out of options now for gpu switching.
>
> For a basic install, all is well (at least better than vesa):
> - Use the 10.10 installer
> - on the first reboot, modify the grub lines so that
>        - linux -> linux16
>        - initrd -> inird16
>        - quiet splash -> i8042.reset i8024.nomux i8024.noloop i8042.nopnp
> - after first boot, update the /etc/default/grub and
> /etc/grub.d/10_linux (and then update-grub) to make the previous grub
> changes permanent.
> - Install the latest sony-laptop-zseries from
> http://www.logic.at/people/preining/software/
>
> Intel graphics work fine, including 3D acceleration. If only I could
> switch off the nvidia card to save power. I did not succeed there.
>
> If anyone manage to get access to the nvidia card on these machines, I'm
> very interested... :-)
>
> Cheers,
> Sebastien
>