CPU | AMD Duron 800 MHz |
RAM | 128MB SDRAM |
Hard Disk | 15GB Hitachi DK23CA-15 |
Display | TFT 14.1" XGA |
Video Card | ATI Rage Mobility P/M AGP 2x with 8MB of memory |
Optical Drive | QSI DVD-ROM SDR-081 |
Network | Realtek RTL-8139 |
Modem | Conexant Ambit SoftK56 HSF |
Sound | VIA AC97 |
PCMCIA | 1 type III or 2 type II |
USB | 2 UHCI ports |
FireWire (IEEE1394) | 1 port (known as i.Link on SONY systems) |
Ports | Serial, Printer, VGA |
Misc. | floppy drive, touchpad (Alps) |
The installation is straightforward. You can boot from the CD. It's the installation I choose. Because of the laptop comes with WinXP already installed, I decided to re-install WinXP and keep a free partition used for Linux and FreeBSD. The installation ran without problems and after the reboot, I had a Linux box running.
Now I use the 2.4.21 kernel with ACPI patch. I upgraded the X Server to XFree 4.3.0 and DRI+XVideo+TV-OUT patch.
With the USB support enabled in the kernel, there is no problem. I can plug my USB mouse and it's detected.
The laptop came with a special offer: the FX-401 + a SONY DSC-P20 digital camera + a MSAC-PC2 adaptor card for Memory Stick. Even if there is no Linux driver for the camera, I can load the pictures through the USB link. You must enable the SCSI and SCSI disk support, The USB device filesystem and USB mass storage support and the VFAT file system support in the kernel configuration. You can access the Memory Stick by mounting it as a SCSI disk:It works fine.
I can read the pictures I took with my SONY digital camera with the MSAC-PC2 card. For this, you need to enable the PCMCIA/CardBus support and the PCMCIA IDE support in the kernel configuration. You can access the Memory Stick by mounting it as an IDE disk:You can reach me at : fedorawiez@yahoo.fr