[ACPI-sppt] Success Story

Just thought your guys would like to hear something good for a change.

Getting a Sony Vaio PGC-GR290K to do IEEE1394-Firewire

I'm reporting on the problem and it's solution in case this might help
others.

To review the problem: the machine is a Sony Vaio PGC-GR290K. The
ohci1394 module wasn't loading (i.e., 'modprobe ohci1394' failed).  The
problem was that PCI wasn't mapping interrupts for the IEEE 1394 device
(as well as several other devices - modem, one USB port, etc.).

I got into the PCI code and was a bit dismayed at the ad hoc methods
used to map interrupts.  However, the most current ACPI patch does
wonders for interrupt mapping and handling.

I had tried building several different kernels, some with code from
RedHat, some from kernel.org.  The RedHat kernels were a problem because
patches from other places (e.g., linux1394.org, and
sourceforge.net/projects/acpi couldn't be applied because of RedHat
changes.  I tried an Alan Cox 2.5.65 kernel from kernel.org, but there
were many problems just building the kernel.  The module building and
management code has changed in 2.5 which required changing some of the
module utilities on my machine.  After much struggle, I finally got the
2.5.65 kernel to build and load, but the 2.5.65 PCI and ACPI didn't fix
any problems.  That was probably because I didn't turn of the APM code
in xconfig.  When APM is running, ACPI exits.  Didn't learn that till
much later.  Sigh.

Earlier this week, I tried buidling the 2.4.20-19.7 kernel from RedHat.
  Still no luck.

Finally, I built the 2.4.21 kernel from kernel.org.  Here's where I
learned about ACPI, APM, and APIC (don't know if APIC figures as part of
the solution, but it had some itneresting things to say in dmesg which
I'll relate later).

Turned off APM in xconfig which allowed ACPI to run.  Still no luck.

Here's the important stuff ....

I applied the acpi-20030619-2.4.21 patch from
soruceforge.net/projects/apci.  Now ACPI discovered the interrupts for
the modem, third USB port, and the Firewire port and mapped them to IRQ
9 (along with a lotta other stuff).

Now the following works just fine:

modprobe ieee1394
modprobe ohci1394
modprobe sbp2

The devices still don't show up in /proc/scsi/scsi, but I ran
'rescan-scsi-bus.sh' (http://linux1394.org/sbp2.html) and the Firewire
devices showed up (a Maxtor disk and a Sony DVD R/RW drive).

'mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt/tmp' mounted the Maxtor and
'mount -t iso9660 /dev/scd1 /mnt/tmp2' mounted the DVD drive.

Copied my home directory, nearly 8 GB, to the Maxtor with no apparent
difficulties (no complaints in /var/log/messages, anyway) - the data
seems to be all there.  Was able to read a CD from the DVD drive.
Havn't tried writing to it yet.

PS about APIC.  When it came up it said that the APIC had been disabled
by the BIOS (now why would it do that?), and APIC had re-enabled it.
Interesting.

Regards,
Roy


-------------------------------------------------------
This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including
Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now.
Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET.
http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100003ave/direct;at.aspnet_072303_01/01