What you need for a Sony Vaio desktop

I can't stress this hard enough - when you buy a new computer, you must keep all the CDs that come with it. These CDs will include a Windows OS install CD, a CD of OEM utilities and drivers for your hardware that work with the OS, and perhaps other software. Let me state that out of all of these, the OS and DRIVERS CDS YOU MUST KEEP SECURE, which makes things easier when it comes time to reinstall everything!

I recently had the chance to work on a Sony Vaio desktop. The front of the case had a number of RX860, but everything on Sony's support website kept saying I was messing with an PCV RX850, and then a sticker on the back said it was a PCV-7762. Did they know where the 2 most important CDs were? No.

My problem with Sony's Vaio support website is that it doesn't have the Drivers per se, they have updates. Well, let me correct that. I did find the Yamaha YMF753 audio driver for XP on there and that worked just fine. But all other files for installing stuff were updates which is why I couldn't get the video drivers installed.

Today, I got a chance to run CPU ID on it, and came up with SiS 651 as the Chipset ID. I really had to dig to find a file that actually installed those drivers. This filename is SI_B20950801BY.EXE. This is a 2003 dated set of SiS 651 drivers for the Sony Vaio desktop I was working on. I found it through what I consider sheer luck, but also knowing what you are looking for helps a LOT. The files on Sony's support website have 2004 dates and are updates. After installing those drivers from the 801BY file, it recognized the SDM S71 monitor and I was able to set it to 1024x768 resolution, higher than the 800x600 I was stuck with up until I got the drivers on there.

Most of the other devices work, but I think the card / memory stick reader still hasn't been installed, and the built-in ethernet is not needed because they use wireless internet and have a USB antenna on that system.

I also found an install for the system's Pioneer DVD-RW burner, a DVR-104 model. It might help to put that in sometime so it will burn faster than 4x. Not really sure what that's for but maybe I'll get a chance to find out.

It could use more RAM having only 512MB and 2 more unpopulated memory slots.

I wasn't able to complete everything I wanted to do. I forgot to put Adobe Reader on there, and didn't get their Epson 3490 scanner working, but did get the printer installed. The driver install for the scanner referred to a Start Here card, and unfortunately that wasn't immediately available. And Audacity wasn't recognizing its MP3 library for some reason. Plus for some dumb reason I downloaded the wrong file for OpenOffice but instead grabbed the English language pack for some reason. Doh!

Unrelated, the entry editor here on Blogger was making the cursor jump around in some odd way and I don't know why.