Installing Severn on a Sony 505VE laptop - broken?

[Alan]

On Tue, 2003-09-09 at 01:47, Dave Jones wrote:
> On Mon, Sep 08, 2003 at 09:53:23PM -0700, Alan wrote:
>  > The problem was actually caused by the X server trying to use dri on a
>  > chipset that really did not support it.  It was causing abnormal cpu
>  > load.  Turning off dri and acpi made things run *much* better.
> 
> If DRI doesn't support a chipset it just fails to enable the accelarated
> 3d extension, and falls back to software 3d rendering. Unless you were
> testing 3d apps, you shouldn't have noticed any difference at all.

I finally ran the test to check what actually caused the problem... 
(Never run large downloads after find something out like that because
you know you will have to reboot for just that reason...)

DRI was *not* the problem.

> ACPI does sound like a more logical suspect for slowness.
> Odd how the Z600 works fine[*] with ACPI, but the 505 doesn't
> (as mentioned in another mail, they're effectively the same machine
>  but with a different keyboard afaict).

Hopefully a bit more sturdy than this one...

ACPI was the problem.Since I don't use any of the features of ACPI at
the moment, I am not worried about it.  I am more concerned by other
issues.  (Such as the weird messages i get when i try and use the CD-ROM
drive. I can make it work, but it requires a big stick and repeated
percussive maintenance.)

> Normally I'd suggest hunting for a BIOS update, but I know how painful
> it is trying to find updates for Vaio BIOS's only too well.
> I gave up last time after the n'th flash animation tried to load.

I need to investigate that route. Not certain if I will have much luck
at getting a fix though.  The machine is upgraded far beyond anything
they claim can be done.  (But then again, the warranty was violated
almost as soon as I opened the box.) 

-- 
Alan <alan at clueserver.org>