Calling all Vaio owners

[IntuitiveNipple]

Sony Notebook Control

Revised 23 April 2008

Recently I've been working on enabling Fn keys, screen dimmer, bluetooth and wireless LAN power, suspend/resume and VMX (VT) on a Vaio VGN-FE41Z.

I've been working to develop a better understanding of how SNC works in order to develop a driver that supports 100% of the SNC functionality so Linux is on an equal footing with Windows.

The primary thrust of that work was to reverse-engineer the Windows driver. That has been done although there is a constant battle of catch-up as newer models appear. Unfortunately the way the SNC is handled isn't uniform across models or even BIOS versions so there needs to be some complicated code to ensure the Linux driver can handle all systems correctly.

Collecting ACPI DSDT of every model

For a while it looked like I didn't need any more ACPI DSDT tables collecting so I removed the instructions from this thread. However, it seems I was a bit hasty and so I'm reinstating the instructions now.

I need to collect the exact model numbers, BIOS versions, and ACPI DSDT (Differentiated System Description Table) from as many different Vaio models as possible (portables, not desktops, since we're mainly dealing with portable-specific issues).

The DSDT can change when BIOS versions change so please check the Model-BIOS table I'm collating to see if your combination of model and BIOS version is already known. If it isn't in that list then please run the script attached to this posting and attach the file it creates to this thread.

Thanks to all the Vaio owners that have already posted the DSDT. If you posted the DSDT of your model already can you please check that you used the correct format in the filename of the attachment since my automated tools can't deal with it if it doesn't have the format:

RANGE-MODEL-BIOS_VERSION.dsdt.tar.gz

e.g. VGN-FE41Z-R0200J3.dsdt.tar.gz

UPPERCASe is important since the filename is used in creating the HTML analysis tables. If your attachment didn't have that name format please use the script I've attached to this post to regenerate your report. Thank you.

Script Instructions

Download the script and save it to a convenient location. Change the permissions of the script so it is executable, and then run it using sudo so it has root permissions to install the dmidecode and acpidump packages, and so it can access /dev/mem to read the DMI and DSDT data:

$ chmod 755 snc-dsdt.sh
$ ls -l snc-dsdt.sh
-rwxr-xr-x 1 tj tj 903 2008-04-23 04:28 snc-dsdt

$ sudo ./snc-dsdt.sh
Checking and installing tools...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
dmidecode is already the newest version.
acpidump is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 4 not upgraded.

Getting model information: Model: VGN-FE41Z, BIOS: R0200J3
Dumping the ACPI Differentiated System Description Table (DSDT)
Packing and compressing the DSDT...
All done, thank-you

If you want, you can now remove the acpidump and dmidecode packages using:
        sudo apt-get remove acpidump dmidecode

Please attach the file /tmp/VGN-FE41Z-R0200J3.dsdt.tar.gz to a new post in this Ubuntu forums thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=465491

Progress

Since this article was first published asking for DSDTs great progress has been made. I now have a complete understanding of the way the ACPI devices are managed and probably more importantly, the way the Sony Windows SNC driver and utilities work. As a result my focus now is on reproducing the same functionality for Linux with no missing pieces or rough edges. I've not had the time or motivation to focus on it over the past few months but someone has recently re-engaged my interest and we're cooperating on getting a decent driver out the door.

The biggest challenge is writing the Vaio model-identification functions. It is complicated because Sony haven't maintained a consistent interface across models, and in some cases they have implemented different functionality under the same function-name - the only way to deal with that is for the driver to 'know' which model it is running and adjust accordingly. A complication is introduced because the code often makes calls into the Sony eXtended BIOS (SXBIOS) and being able to do that on 32-bit and 64-bit, and from within the kernel, presents difficulties.

Once this has been done the rest of the driver is pretty simply to implement (notifications to the input layer, etc.). I'm focused on delivering a driver that will work on Edgy, Feisty, Gutsy, Hardy, Intrepid and beyond (2.6.17+) from one code-base so no users who choose to stick with an older kernel or distro will loose out.

There will be two user-space control applications - command line and Gnome applet. In addition there will likely be a supporting package of scripts for automating the handling of screen brightness, suspend, video-switching, and so on.

[IntuitiveNipple]

An alternative way to find your BIOS version without needing to reboot is:

$ sudo apt-get install dmidecode
$ sudo dmidecode -t bios

[Bluecircle]

VGN-TX770PB-R0051V1

As far as my laptop goes, everything is working except for the volume up/down buttons on the front. The mute button works, the brightness buttons, bluetooth and wireless LAN power, suspend/resume are all running great.

VGN-TX770PB-R0051V1.tar.gz

Edit: I work at a computer store, so I'll grab whatever else I can get, but we mostly get emachines and dell stuff.

[Migs]

* I'm running Vista at this moment so i cannot go in depth as it goes on answering Linux Ubuntu specific questions but I am very curious and willing to help in any way.

When running Edgy 6.10 a couple of month's ago I had problems that there was no DSDT detected. I have no knowledge if the ACPI dump utility can get the DSDT if it can't be found. But as I already stated running in Vista does not stop me to help

I have downloaded the windows version of the Intel ASL compiler and decompiled the DSDT in Vista. Hope it will help you, good luck!

[am.pyka]

On my vaio c1z/b there was no changes after doing that, no fn shortcuts functioning, in several previous installations of feisty in this laptop the fn shortcuts to volume were ok, but at this time there are no fn shortcuts for nothing.... Can you help me?

[Bluecircle]

Originally Posted by am.pyka On my vaio c1z/b there was no changes after doing that, no fn shortcuts functioning, in several previous installations of feisty in this laptop the fn shortcuts to volume were ok, but at this time there are no fn shortcuts for nothing.... Can you help me?

There shouldn't be any changes. All that does is dump your laptop's info into a file so he can look at it and find out how to fix it.

[IntuitiveNipple]

Wow! Thanks for responding so quickly.

Mattia has collected a few DSDTs which he sent over to me this morning. I shall be disassembling them to AML-style source code, isolating the Device (EC) and Device (SNC) parts and looking for commonalities and differences that will help us make the sony-laptop driver know how to configure more models.

Currently the sony-laptop driver module code is in the 2.6.22-rc4 kernel source but if it is possible I'll be wanting to ensure it is backward compatible to 2.6.20 for Feisty at a minimum.

[buggybug]

PCG-K215S-R0110X1

Hey guys!
I think it's neat what you're trying to do here!

Ok for my laptop, nothing works, except the WLAN-adapter, the FN keys don't work, nor does the memorystick slot work (but I don't know how far that can be managed) and suspend/resume... well it goes to hibernation but the resume is... well let's call it "black"

hope to hear from you

[IntuitiveNipple]

So that you can keep up-to-date and see how your contribution is helping I've put together a web page with tables generated by scripts to show the information we are gathering.

It'll change frequently as we add more models to the tables and start to be able to make firm conclusions.

Don't be too concerned if activity seems to have stopped; that'll mean we're hacking about with the drivers. At some point we might ask people with particular models to test out versions of the driver for us.

Sony Notebook Control, ACPI Method Analysis

[xenoph0be]

Here's the DSDT file from a VGN-FE660G. Purchased late summer 2006. The mute button, vol up and down buttons work. Currently the FN combos and 2 S buttons do not work... Hope this helps. If I can give more info on my laptop that may help please let me know.

Jacob