sebhag Posted October 6, 2009 Share Posted October 6, 2009 On a recent trip to the states i had to make a quick choice between the Z series and a MacBook (Pro) and decided to go for the Sony for various reasons... I need to use Windows more than OSX and wasn't a big fan of Apple's bios emulation. Also the Z is extremely light, has very good performance and battery life, an ExpressCard Slot (which you don't get on the MacBooks anymore unless you go 17inch) and a 1600x900 resolution on a 13inch screen. It also features two video chipsets (Nvidia GeForce 9300M GS & Intel GMA 4500MHD) that can be switched without rebooting. The only thing that was tempting on the MacBooks for me was the MagSafe adapter and illuminated keyboard. Anyway, so back at home i decided to give SnowKitty a try. Here's a few notes for myself and everybody else who's interrested.... As you probably know, the Z series and other Vaio's use InsydeH20 bios emulation which features a setup utility with very basic options out of the box. Fortunately there's a very easy way to enable the hidden advanced and power options in the bios using GRUB2. With the advanced options enabled i temporarily disabled onboard sound and LAN to free up some resources which will help with IRQ conflicts when trying to boot from USB and give you USB mouse and keyboard support. I then successfully installed SL from a restored image off a USB drive with Chameleon RC3 and used FakeSMC/NullCPU. To get the trackpad and keyboard going i used VoodooPs2 and alternative Trackpad kext which can be found in the Voodoo forum. Audio works with VoodooHDA and onboard LAN with 82566MM kext which you can find at kext.com or here i'm sure. USB problems were solved with IOPCIFamily for Snow by Slice. Graphics is the only major issue - best i can get on internal display is 1280x800 on Nvidia and Intel without QE/CI. QE/CI works on external display with NVenabler. Intel driver is unlikely to happen and for Nvidia on internal display SNC driver is needed to switch output which might happen at some point. I played with the VGA and Video Config options in the bios but Nvidia section has no option for graphics output so best bet is still SNC driver. I also patched RTC in my DSDT and tried other patches to resolve USB issues (prior to using Slice's kext) but it doesn't really seem to make any difference. Would really like to see DSDT's from other Z users who maybe also patched audio with DSDT and enabled mic too. Hope this is helpful to someone and would appreciate if other Z owners take a few minutes to share their experience. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebhag Posted October 6, 2009 Author Share Posted October 6, 2009 Also, did anybody manage to get native resolution on their Z series with either Nvidia or Intel? Like i said, best i'm getting is 1280x800. Tried with GraphicsMode on both and also the modified x3100 kext for my device ID but no luck. Thanks... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sebhag Posted October 13, 2009 Author Share Posted October 13, 2009 Surely there must be some Vaio Z owners left? Were are you guys? Or did you just give up on the idea? Nobody else interrested? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
avantilove Posted October 27, 2009 Share Posted October 27, 2009 I'm about to give up. As you said, graphics is one big problem. Without qe/ci enabled, it's no better than pretty UI. Since z-series has 16:9 ratio wide-screen, 1280x720 shows better shape than x800. Still 1280x800 is the highest resolution I got. Everything works fine. Photobooth with poor quality was just fine for me. But, graphics.. makes me crazy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PMrjn83 Posted November 16, 2009 Share Posted November 16, 2009 I have a VAIO Z620 and would like to try it. I'm pretty new in this, so if you would guide me a bit, I can try it out and give you some feedback. I did initially put leopard on it when I first got this note book a few months ago, wireless and graphics didn't work. Back then I didn't even use advanced EFI on the BIOS. What are you guys' procedures into getting this to run with everything working? I recently hacked the EFI to unlock some advanced features. If there is anything to make some adjustments under that, please let me know as well. Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edgecrush3r Posted December 31, 2009 Share Posted December 31, 2009 Hi guys, I just received my Vaio Z so i am here in the mess with you guys. As i am already experienced with modding OSX86 hoping we can help eachother out. So far i have used the following kext files to boot from an external SnowLeopard USB disk. - Slice Modded IOPCFamily.kext (solves USBfix) - VoodooPS2Controller (keyboard/ALPS trackpad support) Currently i am playing with the NVEnabler to get the NVidia card working, but like others it seems quiete impossible to get this to work with the internal screen. Is there any way to convert the Injector info to a valid EFI string? Still to be tested is to dump the NVidia BIOS and insert it using Chameleons BIOS options (this new function seems to work pretty nice on my Desktop). PS: I also tried the GMA 4500 patch to enable the resolutions when using the 4500HD card, but it seems it didnt work. Cheers, Tony Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
edgecrush3r Posted January 3, 2010 Share Posted January 3, 2010 Okay so far: - I tried all NVInjectors - I tried GM 4500 HD patch (resolution fix) No way to get the Video cards working in higher resolutions. The NVIDIA rom can not be extracted because its part of the BIOS (so no Chameleon BIOS loading ). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zmalex Posted December 29, 2010 Share Posted December 29, 2010 This guys has made some progress. Albeit not on OSX but it might still be useful. http://0xc0dedbad.com/blog/2010/01/30/dual...on-sony-vaio-z/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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