GRX316MP Serial port and floppy disk?

[madbison]

Hello

I have a GRX316MP, and notice that in Vaio Setup, on the Enable ports tab there is an option to enable or disable the serial port. This is intriguing, as there is no serial port on the Sony. Any ideas on this? I went ahead and purchased a USB to serial cable because of this. Any idea why they have settings for a non existent port?

And I also notice that while there is no floppy disk, there is an option in Sony Notebook setup, Initial Setting tab, there is an option to boot from floppy. Why would this be? I have a Sony TRV900 Digital Video Camera. This came with a PCMCIA Floppy drive. I was hoping to use this floppy drive in the sony laptop. But the driver at

http://www.yedata.com/support/pcm.shtml

says it will not work with Sony notebooks without a floppy disk controller, and you should get a USB floppy instead. What is the point of a USB floppy if you have one built in? I did install the driver, but it does not seem to work.

Any help on these would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
David

[SilverZero]

Serial port in bios: the docking station would maybe have an serial port *hint*

have you tried sony support for your pcmcia floppy? those should work, but there have been problems with xp and the pcmcia slots, standard precedure: latest drivers, xp update.
if you have an other pcmcia card may you can try if it is working in both slots.

[madbison]

Hello

Thanks for the reply. I have a Compact flash card, which has a PCMCIA adaptor card. This works in both slots.

The PCMCIA floppy driver must use some base software or hardware from a built in floppy adaptor, which obviously the GRX316 does not have. I would like to know more about this if anyone has any info.

In the meantime, I will search for another possible driver.

Thank You

[VAIOneer]

Strangely enough, the serial port is for the docking station !!!!

Very odd, but I guess its the only way of making sure that when you "dock" that all the drivers are there and working.

Also, the internal modem needs a COM port (serial port), all be it a virtual one at that. Maybe thats why its also built in as a standard build.