Sony Vaio VGN-K31B

[birchyboy]

Hello, I have a Sony laptop and was trying out Linux (various - Mint, Foresight, etc). I dual boot my other PC with XP Pro and SuSE 10, but I have to say although I am fairly skilled with XP, I am a complete newbie at Linux.

I thought that I would try PC-BSD and the install went well - quick, screen display good and neat graphics.

However, when the laptop actually boots into PC-BSD, all I get is a corrupt display (green patches in the top 10% screen, rest black). I have tried all the options, including safe mode.

How do I sort out the display? Obviously, I can't start a command line ...

Presumably I enter some boot configuration to set a primitive display resolution and then sort it out from there when I have a usable screen.

Anyone help me with the parameters? The spec is Type K Vaio, Celeron D 330 (2.66Ghz), 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 on ATi Radeon.

[TerryP]

I'm not sure if the display setup uses the installed /etc/X11/xorg.conf file that defines the settings or a special one of it's own but it's worth a try. Hit the 'display setup' in the boot menu that comes up after selecting to start FreeBSD: same place it shows booting into single user mode, with acpi disabled, and safe mode. I would expect it to use it's own generic configuration for that so you should be able to use that to setup your display.


Needless to say you need a working configuration to use a GUI to configure it any other way after boot. Which the GUI utility is launched automagically on the first boot to ensure you get to set it up.


The display setup program will let you set your resolution and driver and stuff, the advanced page even allows manually setting some things should it be necessary.


If you can't get the display setup program starting via the boot menu.... The best bet would be involving a command prompt, the other would be booting a FreeBSD LiveCD which means downloading and burning a CD for it..


Command Prompt way:

boot off the PC-BSD install CD, select the language/keyboard. Right click on the background (not the installer window) and select 'xterm' in the popup menu.

Mount the hard drive partition you installed on and use the command line to copy the installers configuration file to your installed system. The '#' symbol represents the prompt, just enter the command text as is and hit enter at the end of the line.


# mkdir /mysys
# mount /dev/ad0s1a /mysys
# mv /mysys/etc/X11/xorg.conf /mysys/etc/X11/xorg.conf.bad
# cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /mysys/etc/X11/xorg.conf
# reboot


Pull out the disk and let it boot normally into PC-BSD and you should have a working desktop to configure further with.



note: depending on your disk layout, ad0s1a might not be your PC-BSD install. Replace the 1 with your partition number, e.g.

ad0s1 -> first drive, first partition
ad0s2 -> first drive, second partition
ad0s3 -> first drive, third partition
ad0s4 -> first drive, forth partition.

you could also look from the command prompt by using the command


ls /dev | grep 'ad0*a'


it should return a list of all ad0 partitions ending in 'a', namely ad0s1a or whatever it is on your system.



Anyone help me with the parameters? The spec is Type K Vaio, Celeron D 330 (2.66Ghz), 15.4" WXGA 1280 x 800 on ATi Radeon.

What kind of card are you using?

You'll probably want to chose the 'ati' or 'radeonhd' drivers but they should also work fine with the 'vesa' driver, any card that doesn't work with the generic 'vesa' driver probably should have return to engineering written on the bottom >_>

[birchyboy]

TerryP

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I'll give it a go later ... :)


birchyboy (A significant misnomer, at my age)

[birchyboy]

TerryP

Many thanks for the guidance.

I now have a working desktop and it's very smart. Only 1028x768 and VESA card, but it's OK - a nice, clean interface.

I tried altering the resolution to WXGA, but although it said it would return to the original if I didn't choose to keep the new one, it didn't & locked up. However, when I rebooted, it ran the replaced xorg.conf file and was OK again. No doubt I can solve that in time.

I tend to prefer KDE to Gnome, but not being very familiar with them, no doubt they each have benefits.

Looks good and the package management seems a lot easier than Linux.

No doubt you will hear from me again .... :?

[TerryP]

Cheers :-)

[bhattijp]

Hello sir,
Hope you will be fine.

i have the same Laptop its Model is

Sony VAIO VGN-K31B

and i dont have its Video Graphic Card Driver

i am using windows XP

Please send me Graphis Card Driver

or its Link where i can download the Driver.

i am facing problem to find it.

i will be thankful to you.

Hameed Bhatti

[birchyboy]

bhattijp

I don't know if I can help a great deal - you probably need TerryP's help.

I can tell you that my VGN-K31B uses the ATI Radeon RS2000 Mobility IGP 340M card.

If you have installed PC-BSD, you will get the startup screen and you should press '6' to get the graphics settings screen. Mine runs on the standard VESA driver that comes with the PC-BSD installation. This will not be a wide screen setting, but you can change the screen later to WXGA. Mine now works on 1280x800 WXGA

[birchyboy]

... and i dont have its Video Graphic Card Driver .... i am using windows XP

Hameed Bhatti

SORRY - I just realised that you are using Windows XP, not PC-BSD.

You can try the generic VGN driver - ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Downloads/A ... 812-UN.exe (ftp://ftp.vaio-link.com/pub/Downloads/AT/D/VID/ATDVID-00610812-UN.exe)