Sony PCG-F430

computing: hardware: Sony PCG-F430

Overview
The Sony Vaio PCG-F430 is a laptop, apparently made in the late 1990s or early 2000s. While it is no longer available new, used units and parts are pretty easily and cheaply available. Drivers for most of the hardware are also finable on the web, though not always easily.

Specs

 * CPU: Intel 450 MHz Pentium III
 * Display: 14.1" 1024 x 768 LCD Active Matrix
 * Graphics: 1280 x 1024 x 8 bits, 1024 x 768 x 24 bits ...
 * Memory: up to 256 MB

Links

 * parts at Impact Computers
 * reviews at Epinions
 * drivers:
 * DriverGuide (sign up for free account, or get user/pass from BugMeNot)
 * Sony: technical info and a (very) few drivers

from
I'm starting here by just transcribing some notes I wrote down while hunting for various drivers on the web; I'm still looking for the modem driver, and if I find it I'll post the how-to.

One caveat about the hardware: make sure all the screws are back in place on the back of the unit before moving (lifting/lowering) the display-top; my unit developed problems with spontaneously powering off when the lid is flexed, and I think it came from some of the screws not being in place, which may have allowed the system board to develop a hairline crack. (Later, these problems seemed to go away, sometime after the screws were tightened.)

At power-up, makes "Sony sound" but not as loud as F350 does.

Linux

 * kubuntu 6.06 (Dapper) seems to have fixed the problems mentioned below, both in the LiveCD and the installed version. Modem still not supported.
 * The kubuntu 5.10 (Breezy) LiveCD works well enough; the display, sound card, battery manager, and PCMCIA bus all work (finding network cards that will work, especially wireless ones, is another issue; see wireless network cards in Linux. Some of the fixed-height dialogues in the Control Center are too large for the available pixels, and the ok/cancel buttons drop below the edge of the screen. (It's possible that this can be fixed by changing the font size, but that technique did not work when I tried it quickly.) The modem does not seem to be supported, however; /dev/modem does not appear, and none of the system configuration utilities seem to detect a modem.

Drivers
The one driver I had serious difficulty finding when trying to install Windows 98 on this model was the modem driver; see for more details. I think I had to hunt a bit for the sound and video, but they were both available.
 * Display: NeoMagic Magic Media 256AV 128 bit 2.5 meg
 * Sound: Yamaha DS-XG (used by F4xx series)
 * From the device manager:
 * disk drives:
 * HITACHI_DK23AA-60 (the factory hard drive?)
 * TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-C2202 (yes, a Toshiba inside a Sony)
 * SONY NOTEBOOK CONTROL DEVICE
 * SONY PROGRAMMABLE I/O CONTROL DEVICE
 * INTEL(R) 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
 * Sony CXD3222 OHCI i.LINK(IEEE1394) PCI Host Controller
 * IrDA Fast Infrared Port
 * uses irenum.sys, nscirda.sys
 * HCF 56K Modem (see )

Modem

 * PCI\VEN_127A&DEV_2005&SUBSYS_8074104D&REV_01
 * windows\system32\drivers\hcf_msft.sys, modem.sys
 * Ebay auction says: IFX-86 or 1-676-063-11 (part number?), compatible with PCG-F370, -F390, -F420, -F430, -F450, -F480, -F490, -F490K, -F520
 * another source says: IFX-86 = A-8056-484-A, but this appears to be a video card, not a modem