Sony VAIO PCG-XR9 (where to find drivers-plea for help).

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

I have a BIIIG problem with this laptop. My fiance's little sister asked me
to help a friend of her's with a laptop. Apparently sister's friend has an
aunt living in Japan. This aunt sent her this PCG-XR9 as a gift, but forgot
to include the CD with all neccessary drivers (We tried contacting her, but
she was unable to locate that CD). Laptop came with the original Japanese
Windows 98SE installed with all the drivers present, but before I got my
hands on that laptop, some genious friend of those two little girls (both
are just 11) formatted HD, bought and tried to install a Polish version 98SE
which of course didn't work well without the drivers. :| What makes this
situation terrible for me is the fact, that:

- my fiances little sister asked me for help, so I have to do something,
otherwise I'm in trouble ,
- laptop belongs to this little sister's friend and if I fail there'll be
two very dissappointed little girls blaming me that they can't play
HarryPotter or something,
- that little sister's friend is a daughter an art classes teacher that
teaches in the school they both attend so if I fail my fiances sister may be
in trouble during her art classes .


So basically I have this Sony VAIO PCG-XR9 with PCGA-PSX1 docking station,
PCGA-FCX1 connector and PCGA-FDX1 floppy and PCGA-DVDX1 dvd. And I have no
drivers for it. I've tried googling for them but either there are no
references to PCG-XR9 (except for some battery sale offers) or only pages in
Japanese are available. The only word in Japanese I know is "konichiva".

The closest thing I came up with are those links:
http://www.vaio-link.com/specifica [...] l=en&m=148
http://www.vaio-link.com/specifica [...] l=en&m=146
http://www.vaio-link.com/specifica [...] l=en&m=147
(I can access the download area for those laptops by supplying the code
found on the docking station, the code on the laptop has wornout).

But non of these corresponds 100% with the PCG-XR9 (checked with
SiSoftSandra and various parts are not identical). It seems that there are
no pages at all in English with support for XR9 so I'm guessing that this
particular model was not sold outside Japan.

There are pages in Japanese that have something about this laptop, but I
can't understand anything.

I found this, but I don't know which drivers are for which laptop:
http://www.myakiba.com/htm/sony-drivers.htm

Those two pages seem to be my best bet, but... there are no links on the
first one and I can't make any sense from the second one:
http://www.sony.jp/ProductsPark/Consumer/PCOM/PCG-XR/

http://vcl.vaio.sony.co.jp/support/note/pcg-xr9.html


Soo... HELP! A plea to anyone out there either not Japanese-challanged or
having some info on English pages about this laptop. Tell me where can I
find drivers for this laptop and it's accessories. If only pages in Japanese
are available, could you please supply direct links to files with some
description or a webpage link with a discription of what's there on the
webpage and what am I supposed to "click".

Thank you for any input and help. I'm really running in circles with this
laptop.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

AndrewJ wrote:
>> PCG-XR9
>
> I believe the drivers are at this site:
> http://www.vaio.sony.co.jp/Products/VGN-S70B/

It's a diffrent type of laptop, I'm affraid. I've tried using the search
function though (a magnifying glass in the top right corner) and it produced
lots of links for "PCG-XR9" but again, all in Japan.

> If you put your cursor over a link it's translated to english just
> above the task bar at the bottom of your screen.

Tried it, but can't find anything for PCG-XR9 on this page. Probably because
it's a very old laptop.

> I had mixed results trying to translate entire pages with babel fish:
> http://babelfish.altavista.com/

Thank you for this link, I'm trying to browse the support pages with it now.
<...> And I ended up on the:
http://vcl.vaio.sony.co.jp/support/note/pcg-xr9.html webpage, but Babelfish
fails to translate anything. Anyway, this page seems to contain what I'm
looking for, but there are no links to exe or zip's. :|

> This was built about the same time as my SR33, some of those drivers
> may or may not help.
>
> I loaded XP Pro on my SR33 with no trouble. That might be the best
> solution of all.


XP won't run on this laptop. It only has 96 MB of RAM and 400 Mhz CPU.

Archived from groups: comp.sys.laptops (More info?)

AndrewJ wrote:
>> XP won't run on this laptop. It only has 96 MB of RAM and 400 Mhz CPU
>
> As a last resort they could upgrade(replace with 2- 128MB sticks) the
> expensive proprietary RAM to 256MB. Which is what I did as soon as I
> got mine. XP runs fine on that speed of CPU. Kingston shows the RAM
> layout but don't carry 128MB sticks.
>
http://www.ec.kingston.com/ecom/co [...] it1=Search
>
> I will send you the 2 64MB sticks I removed from mine. That might
> squeek by with XP or just to test it. That could earn you some points
> either way. Send your mailing info to andrewjbbr at gmail dot com

<gone to private e-mail to e-mail discussion>