Re: Switching LCD Off and Using Monitor Instead. (Was: Formatting a USB Floppy on Sony Vaio Z505JE.)

Hi Andy,

> Google gave me this:  http://users.actrix.gen.nz/michael/usbmount.html
> 
> The author has a step by step on doing an MS-DOS format on some USB
> device that is treated as a floppy under MSWindows.  Perhaps that will
> help?

Thanks, but he had a device that was already formatted and just had to
add partition information at the start, e.g. with fdisk.  This, like
filesystem meta-data, is just data stored in the sectors created during
formatting.

> I very rarely am formating devices so I tend to forget the particulars
> and am always googling or using apropos on the CLI.
> 
> Sorry if I've been less helpful,

No problem.  I much prefer you tried to help that get no response at all
:-)  Besides, it put me on a better track with sformat.  I've since
raised the subject on linux-usb-devel.

    http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=2540583&forum_id=5398

I've other problems remaining with this Z505JE.  The main one being use
of a CRT monitor.  I find thaht Fn-F7 to switch between LCD/CRT output
only works whilst LILO is waiting for kernel image selection.  The key
does nothing once Linux is running.

If I switch the LCD off at LILO I find the CRT display suffers terrible
tearing and flickering that isn't there with both LCD and CRT running.
But I don't want to leave the LCD displaying for no reason.  I'm using
Debian Woody's xserver-xfree86 package, version 4.1.0-16.

    Section "Device"
            Identifier      "Neomagic 256AV"
            Driver          "neomagic"
            # Added by Ralph to try and stop the tearing and flashing.
            # But it didn't work.
            # Option "NoAccel" "true"
            # Option "SWCursor" "true"
            # Option "PCIBurst" "false"
    EndSection

Anyone come across these problems before?

Cheers,


Ralph.