[Oberon] Bluebottle 5/22/2002 on Sony VAIO

[Thomas Frey]

> A friend dropped by with a Sony VAIO  notebook, model PGC-FX210.
> 
> I happened to have a CD of the 5/22/2002 Bluebottle release (Latest Stable)
> at hand, so I tried it out.
> 
> The system boots ok.  The built in touch pad and keys are active as the
> "mouse" and a double touch on the touchpad acts like the MM (execute)
> button.  In addition, the ctrl key also acts like a MM button.  A logitech
> first wheel mouse, model M-BE58, plugged in to the right USB port is not
> responsive.
This can probably be changed by changing "Plug and Play OS" to "No" in 
the BIOS.

> PCITools.Scan reveals a RealTek 8139 network controller.  I have used the
> shift key at boot time, and entered the configuration string
> "LinkDevice=AosRTL8139"
> 
> The system says that there is a Megaerror, which is reported from a timeout
> loop in AosRTL8139.Mod.  No evidence of packets are noticeable on the LED
> indicators of my hub.
I got this info from two other VAIO-RealTek users and also saw it myself 
on one of these machines but i was not able to fix it within the 10 
minutes I had access to it. I think it might be a 8139C+ chip that does 
not support the old 8139 interface completely (only a guess). Probably 
writing a 8139C+ driver would solve the problem and also give support 
for the RTL8169 gigabit NIC. Realtek was so kind to send us the 
documentation under NDA. Now it is only time that is missing.

> 
> There is also some error about obsolete code or protocol on the
> AosRTL8139.Install.
The Obsolete message will be removed in the next release (end of year or 
soon after ;-) ) but will not solve the Sony-RTL problem.


--Thomas