[9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[Thomas West]

Has any one installed Plan9  on the subject Vaio?

If so, is the recipie available?

-tom

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[vic]

> Has any one installed Plan9  on the subject Vaio?

I did about a year ago.
I had no problems with the basic installation.
I don't have the machine anymore, but I'll try to help
if you have trouble.

Vic

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[Boyd Roberts]

Thomas West wrote:
> Has any one installed Plan9  on the subject Vaio?

I have it on a PCG-N505SN, which I think is the European version.

Make sure you have a compatible PCMCIA ethernet card [my kingdom
for a 3c589 PCMCIA card].

I also have it on a PCG-Z600LEK.

It has a graphics card that Plan 9 doesn't support.  Well, it works
but you get large rectangular verticle 'holes' in the windows.  To
defeat this problem during install I just resized the 'install' window
so it was really narrow, defeating the problem.

This doesn't really worry me because it has an on-board i8255x ethernet
card which plan 9 supports and I want to use it as a server [no graphics].

> If so, is the recipie available?

Yes:

    http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/code/plan9/usbflop.html

Sony seem to chop their disks in 'half':  1/2 for c: and the rest
is unused [presumably for d:] which is fine for a Plan 9 partition.
Should you need to re-install off the VAIO CDs they seem to leave
the 'unused' part of the disk alone;  your Plan 9 is left intact.

I've installed it some small n times on both.

If it's running Windows 2000 getting dual boot to work is probably
not doable.  It is with '98.  I tried it on the PCG-Z600LEK with
the NT dual boot and it took some sort of a fault during installation.
I 'think' 2000 is lot closer to NT than it is to '9x but I could be
wrong or it could be some 'weird VAIO thing' (tm).

I don't care about running 2000 on the PCG-Z600LEK so it always
boots Plan 9.  You can swap between them with disk/fdisk and
some other windows/floopy trickery which I forget.

Both of them are sitting beside me so, if you get stuck mail me.

    http://home.fr.inter.net/boyd/code/plan9/vaios.jpg

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[Matt H]

> This doesn't really worry me because it has an on-board i8255x ethernet
> card which plan 9 supports and I want to use it as a server [no graphics].

you send me the vaio I'll send you a populated mini tower :)

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[Boyd Roberts]

Matt H wrote:
> you send me the vaio I'll send you a populated mini tower :)

No chance.

Despite the amount of trouble they've given me, my VAIOs are cool.

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[vic]

boyd@strakt.com (Boyd Roberts) writes:
> I have it on a PCG-N505SN, which I think is the European version.

> It has a graphics card that Plan 9 doesn't support.  Well, it works

I don't think the 505F and the PCG-N505SN are so
closely related.  In any case, I had no video problems.

Re: [9fans] vaio PCG 505 F - and Plan9 Perfect together?

[Boyd Roberts]

vic wrote:
> 
> boyd@strakt.com (Boyd Roberts) writes:
> > I have it on a PCG-N505SN, which I think is the European version.
> 
> > It has a graphics card that Plan 9 doesn't support.  Well, it works
> 
> I don't think the 505F and the PCG-N505SN are so
> closely related.  In any case, I had no video problems.

You misread my post.  The video problem is with the PCG-Z600LEK.

No problem with the 505.