Hi Adam, This is interesting, so that would mean that the "physical connection" of the Intel card to the backlight is in fact *not* physical at all, but instead it's a software situation that results from the BIOS's way of initializing things ?
In other words: Because of the BIOS itself, the backlight control is always "connected" to the Intel card, even when booting in static Speed mode ? It would be really, really great to be able to fix the mapping, so that the NVIDIA card can then control everything. I'm pretty damn sure this is just a matter of getting more exposure (ie: more knowledgable kernel and/or "Nouveau" developers) about this issue, what do you think ? On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 10:12 AM, Adam Hill <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Same here, I would be very happy if we could control brightness while > > running on the NVIDIA card. I don't know exactly what it takes, maybe > the > > Intel card needs to be accessible from the PCI bus (since, as I heard, > the > > physical brightless control is connected to the Intel card). As I see > it, > > initializing the Intel card without allocating any of its buffers (ie: > > initialize it just enough so we can ask it to set the brightness) might > be > > the way to do it. > > I fear that it may be much more complicated than that because as > far as I > know the BIOS initialises the Intel card at boot time regardless of the > position of the hybrid graphics switch. That means that by the time the > Linux > kernel starts the Intel card already has its BIOS and VRAM mapped in to > where > the NVidia drivers expect their stuff to be. > > The simplest solution overall would be if Sony modified the BIOS to > initialise the correct card at first boot, but that isn't going to happen > because Windows doesn't care. So, the two sensible options would seem to > be: > > 1) Unmap the Intel card's resources and map in the NVidia card before the > NVidia module is loaded. > > 2) Somehow map both cards in. I'm not sure if this is possible because I > don't > really know much about how video BIOS is accessed - if it is expected to be > in > a particular place in the memory map then this would be impossible. > > Adam. > > > > Maybe we could set up a bounty that would go to the one who publishes a > > kernel patch and/or generic shell script and instructions to do it ? > That > > could be nice... > > > > On Thu, Dec 9, 2010 at 5:36 PM, Jordi Augé <[email protected]> wrote: > > > Hi, > > > > > > I'm a new Vaio Z user, and I've successfully installed Linux as Main OS > > > on a VPCZ11X9/e, after some struggling I've gotten everything working, > > > including hsdpa and graphics switching. My only gripe so far is the > > > inability to control screen brightness when using nvidia graphics. > > > > > > Any updates on this issue? what changes will be necessary to implement > > > it? > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > Mailing list: > > > https://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series<https://launchpad.net/%7Esony-vaio-z-series> > <https://launchpad.net/%7Esony- > > > vaio-z-series> Post to : [email protected] > > > Unsubscribe : > > > https://launchpad.net/~sony-vaio-z-series<https://launchpad.net/%7Esony-vaio-z-series> > <https://launchpad.net/%7Esony- > > > vaio-z-series> More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp >
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