Successful Installation on Ultraportable

[rollfaster]

So here goes with the larger post regarding osx86 on the sony TR3AP or PCG-4A1L. I bought this little guy off ebay because I wanted an ultraportable osx capable machine with pcmcia. After getting it and struggling with it for a few weeks I'd like to report what I came up with.

 

First off, never boot this machine into OSx86 while on AC power. It defaults to the max cpu step, but runs slower than all hell (minutes for bootup, 15 seconds for the dock to pop up, etc). Running on battery at boot (and can be connected to AC after the initial bootup) runs slow, but I'll tell you how I fixed that below.

 

For the "distro," the ISO I used was the Myzar 10.4.4/10.4.5. The 10.4.1.Generic DVD has perfect hardware support (video included), but of course runs no universal apps, so it's of little use to me. The Jas ISO's weren't preferable for me (or let me say any other ISO besides the Myzar one) because the ALPS trackpad used by sony wasn't supported. So when I installed, I selected the intel base, intel sse2 and 10.4.5 update.

 

Booting the first time you need a usb keyboard and mouse. Fill out your contact infos. Upon reaching the desktop, finder will complain that various kexts were installed incorrectly. This is great news as it means they will run your assorted hardware, but only after you repair their permissions. To repair them, go to terminal, cd into the extensions folder and do a chown and chmod on the offenders (including the plugins inside appleps2controller.kext). They should work on next boot.

 

Let's work piece by piece here:

 

Video/Display: Not working

The intel 855/gm/gme controller isn't supported by any os x besides 10.4.1. Look at the various whiny threads around here concerning this puppy. So 1024x768 is what you get, you can turn the monitor stretching off in the bios if you like correct aspect.

 

Keyboard and Trackpad: Working (with caveats)

The caveats being that 1) I've only gotten them to work with the Myzar distro and 2) VERY IMPORTANT - they will not work after the kextcache gets rebuilt. This means no new kexts can go in the extensions folder or you've lost your mouse (you can get the keyboard back, but never the mouse). If you want to use your own extensions, put them in your user's directory in a folder and add a line in /etc/rc to load them (I'll mention this below).

 

Wifi: Not working

Intel pro wireless 2200bg doesn't work. More whiny posts around here concerning this guy. I tore it out and will be putting in another bg card that will compatible with kismac and have a universal driver (or be recognized as airport). I'll report back when I pick one up.

 

PCMCIA: Not working

Ricoh RL5C475 controller. This one was a bummer, as this is why I wanted this computer. I'm gonna work on modifying IOPCCARD ala TI chipsets, I'll report back my progress.

 

Battery Indicator: Working

Get the modified powermanagement bundle from here:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?showtopic=14912

 

LAN: Working

Plug'n'play baby, no issues here with the intel pro 100/ve.

 

Sound: Partially working

I believe it's soundmax audio covered by ac97audio, right now all it gets is line out, I'll look around a bit more for this puppy (channel spreading?).

 

CPU Clock speed: WORKING!

This was a big annoyance, and here I almost thought I failed with this computer. It boots a 600mhz and is locked there as the apple speedstep stuff doesn't work. Thanks to some enterprising developers though, there's acpicputhrottle.kext. This is a low end enough processor (1ghz) that the latest version of this kext isn't supported. I used the one created right before disabling steps <= 1ghz, found here:

 

http://forum.insanelymac.com/index.php?act...ost&id=2618

 

I placed it in my specially dedicated extensions folder in my user directory (don't want to lose the trackpad) and added the following to the end of my /etc/rc

 

kextload ~/directory/acpicputhrottle.kext

sysctl -w kern.cputhrottle_curfreq=x

 

where x is the max cpu clock in mhz (in this case 1000).

 

And now the UI runs pretty smooth, very nice!

 

Battery: Working

Recognized in "About this Mac"

 

Modem: Not tested, not recognized

 

Sleep: not working

So as you can tell, this is turning into a run-all-the-time-at-full-steam little portable. Oh well, at least it runs.

 

USB: Working

 

Memory Stick slot: Not tested

 

Camera: Not working

 

Optical drive: Working

Reads great, haven't tested cd writes. I assume that you'd have to use a toast 6.0.x permutation, as that's all that works on my desktop.

 

 

Another tip, be sure to disable sleep and hard drive sleep as you may lose your mouse and keyboard and have to reboot.

 

 

Final xbench score of 59.28, not bad for a pretty low end portable.

 

I don't know what else I'm forgetting, I'll post back here whenever I have an update on this little guy. And I'll add this info to the HCL.

 

-RF

[Stadsport]

Pretty cool to see this being put on different form factors (if ultraportable counts).

I'd love to see someone with a VAIO UX series try this out