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Having managed to break the screen of my HP Omnibook 800 when I was out launching rockets one day, I had a problem. I needed a laptop to interface to the rocket onboard flight computers both before launch, and after recovery, but the Omnibook without a screen was not particularly useful. I needed a new laptop anyway, so I thought that this time, I'd get a Sony Vaio, since I had always been impressed by their design. The Omnibook 800 could then be used as a monitorless Linux Server.
I wasn't actually intending on getting a Z505, but wandering down Tottenham Court Road in London, I saw one, and fell in love with it.
The Sony Vaio came equipped with Windows 98. Obviously, the first thing that needed doing was upgrading it to a real operating system. Given that the latest version of the Red Hat Linux distribution, version 6.1 was available for download, this seemed an ideal choice.
What is the Sony Vaio Z505 ?
The Sony Vaio Z505 is a sub-laptop running with an Intel Celeron 333MHz CPU and 64Mb of RAM and a 6.4 Gb hard disk drive. It has a 12.1 inch active matrix (TFT) colour LCD screen with a resolution of up to 1024 x 768 (XGA). It is fitted with an accelerated 128-bit PCI controller with 1 Mb of Video RAM (NeoMagic. 2093). It weighs 1.77 kg, and comes equipped with the following connections on the laptop itself:
This is very good news for anyone who wants to control the ports in the replicator via Linux, since it makes the whole business of talking to the various ports, fairly straightforward.
Why install Linux ?
There are several good reasons as to why I wanted to install Linux on the Sony Vaio Z505, these being as follows:
The Installation Hardware.
Installing Linux on a Sony Vaio Z505, was extremely straightforward. The Omnibook 800 comes with a SCSI port as standard, so I connected the SCSI HP CD-ROM drive to the Sony Vaio Z505 SCSI port, and put a Redhat Linux 5.2 CD in it. I also connected up the external 3.5 inch floppy drive. When the Linux installation started, it picked up the SCSI CD-ROM straight away - very impressive.
I chose Redhat Linux 5.2 because I had installed earlier versions of Redhat Linux previously on other hardware, so was happy using it again. Having said that, I came close to getting SuSE and Debian implementations of Linux - I'll probably get them at some point and install them on one of my development boxes, just out of interest.
Linux Installation Time.
The installation process took me about 30-45 minutes, but that was only because I chose a custom installation. The workstation and server installations would have taken considerably less time.
The Linux Installation Process.
The 4 Gb hard disk that came with the Omnibook 800 was already partitioned into 2 x 2Gb partitions, so I left Windows-95 on the first partition, and installed Linux on the second partition. The Redhat manual recommends approximately 120 Mb for a minimal install, approximately 450 Mb of disk space for a Linux Workstation installation, and approximately 1.65 Gb of disk space for a Linux Server installation, so the 2 Gb I had was going to be ample for a server installation.
There are very few salient features of my install, since it was so simple, the only features that stand out are :
At the end of the install, the laptop booted to Linux flawlessly. No problems at all.
The built-in Mouse.
The HP Omnibook 800 comes with a bizarre flip-out mouse. It takes a bit of getting used to, but works quite well on a flat surface. Sat on your lap, it's a bit of a pig to use it though.
When running the Linux installation process, the mouse should be configured as a PS/2 mouse. Following installation, I experienced no problems with the mouse. Mouse operations with X-windows on the Omnibook 800 are fine.
X-Windows.
Problem: I started up X-windows, but it was having none of it. This was a bit of a bore, since I really needed to take advantage of X-windows for some of my development work (such as web development).
Stopgap Solution: I ran Xconfigurator (which didn't crash the machine), and dropped the screen display to a 640 x 400 LCD display in what looked like 0.5 bit colour.
X-windows then started up without a hitch - problem was, the screen display at this resolution blew chunks.
Eventual Solution: I downloaded the Precision Insight XFree86.neomagic fix (available form both the Precision Insight and the Redhat web sites). The screen display looks far, far better, now X-windows is useable.
Peripherals.
So far, I have successfully tested the following peripherals with the HP Omnibook 800 running Redhat Linux 5.2:
Interfacing a Linux laptop to household appliances.
Well, it just had to be done. Using as parallel port for just printing just seemed a bit tame. So I started thinking of other devices which could be interfaced to a Linux box.
Questions for new converts to the cause
How do I mount external devices such as floppy disk drives and CD-ROMs ?
Use the mount command. e.g.
For floppy disk drives: mount /mnt/floppy
How do I copy files from a MS-DOS format floppy disk.
Use the mcopy command. There are a number of commands for accessing MS-DOS format floppy disks. To copy a file from the floppy disk to the directory you are currently in, type:
mcopy a:filename.extension .
To copy a file from the floppy disk to a specific directory, type:
mcopy a:filename.extension /directory
Linux Links
(c) 1999 Richard Osborne,
London. |
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