I have a fully functioning one of these, running Windows 7, which I've upgraded to SSD. I absolutely love this thing, and wish they still made it with current components. I paid almost 3K for mine :)
flahr1 Can a phone have a web browser that doesn't keep constantly zooming into text boxes? Can a phone have a desktop with icons? Can a phone have more than 2 ports?
Have one of these at home. It ran Win 8.1 fast and Win 7 even faster. Even had it running Mac OS X 10.6 as a portable 'mac' for fun, and everything worked, even the graphics. I had the extended battery and my HDD is still working. Its not used anymore but runs better than you'd think for a 32 bit single core CPU.
that was one of the best PC i had in that time, it ran windows vista without any problem, touch screen, GSM, Bluetooth, WiFi, fingerprint, dual camera. the keyboard worked perfectly. believe me, when you had that vs a pocket pc with windows mobile the vaio was superior x 100 times, but today is old..
What a beautiful little gadget, just imagine a full blown PC in the palm of your hand back in the day. I'd say this thing was WAY ahead of its time the technology was just not there, of-course nowadays you can get a quad-core Intel Atom tablet with 2gigs of RAM a 64GB ssd with Windows 10 at a throwaway price. But with that tiny screen and XP or Vista on it.. nah.
Cingular was bought by AT&T in the early-mid 2000s if I recall. Lots of people wanted a small computer - enough that plenty of models were and still are being made in some cases: Samsung Q1 series OQO series Sony Vaio UX series Sony Vaio P series Toshiba Libretto series Viliv S / N series Some Panasonic ToughBooks It's quite difficult to cool such small computers - you either choose between processing power or having a fan, and many opted for the fan. These were meant to run Windows, not walk it. >1GB >Just barely enough for Windows XP The requirement was only 64MB according to the box, 128MB recommended. I'd have to say its unusable unless 256MB or more, which puts this squarely in the acceptable bracket. The Sony Vaio UX was notable for the fact you could (not easily) change the CPU by using a heat lamp to remove it and add a better model. I believe you could add up to a Core2 Duo, but I could be wrong. Don't worry, its not this badly constructed - it's just broken to hell and back by the looks of it. >Expecting tactile feedback from the keyboard of a UMPC Come on you're smarter than that, Dave!
One of my old roommates had one of these. He got it from our state surplus office, where they sell old equipment. He said that these were pretty popular for a while for applications like mobile insurance adjusters. These allowed them to go to scenes, take photos, and file reports on incidents pretty quickly. If you have one that's not been torn into pieces, you can actually make it do a surprising amount of work.
amazing piece of engineering. full fledged PC in that thing. we didn't have 1GB ram and that storage for more 5 years. phones still are only 32GB commonly. The Intel processors at that time were notoriously hot and power hungry. Even 2 Hours of battery is not bad for it at that time. even full fledged "portable all day" laptops couldn't pull more than 3 at that time
+Dorf Schmidt I've looked at those too, also neat. I wish they would bring back the umpc with the technology we have for mobile computing today. The tablet market kind of took the entire market away from that sort of thing but I feel like a tablet is nowhere near as useful.
Thanks for this teardown Dave. I have a Samsung Q1 Ultra UMPC, it's a bit bigger, 7" resistive touch screen + stylus, 600MHz Intel Atom, 1GB RAM, and does 8 hours on the battery. It has half of the keyboard either side of the screen and tactile response is pretty good, but the keys are tiny. It fortunately comes with external USB keyboard and a case which acts as a stand. Also has an analogue thumb stick on the left and corresponding d-pad on the right which makes it great for video game emulators. Runs pretty slow on Win XP Tablet Edition though.
Things like this Sony Vaio were much ahead of their time, and there were just no software for it. As a ham radio enthusiast, I tried micro Windows PCs several times, and the UI experience was always awful. 99.9% of apps were designed for mouse and were completely unusable with a touch screen, there were no scalable fonts, and so on. In 2006 there was just no software, designed for 4.5" screen, so I can imagine a disappointment of people who bought this for 3K$... And, surprisingly, today Vaio UX is a sort of rarity, and cost a lot, more than many modern laptops :)
1gb for windows xp is huge. These are the requirements: The minimum hardware requirements for Windows XP Home Edition are: •Pentium 233-megahertz (MHz) processor or faster (300 MHz is recommended) •At least 64 megabytes (MB) of RAM (128 MB is recommended) •At least 1.5 gigabytes (GB) of available space on the hard disk.
I've heard some people actually replaced the CPU on this with a legit Core 2 Duo mobile, which would make this the most powerful UMPC in this screen size category, to date.
A lot of UMPCs were running low tier BGA Celerons and Pentiums (for the premium units), and the run of the mill were Atom, like netbooks. It was uncommon, some were also equipped with Core Solos. Mediocre performance at best. Today's embedded solutions could certainly handle an OS as hefty as Windows, but these units were almost just a novelty.
The chipset is usually bigger than the cpu as it uses the process node from the step before (and allows them to use those foundries after they stop making CPUs)
The micro could be a keyboard controller. The intel ICH9 south bridge does not have a keyboard controller and would require something to decode the keyboard signals, which the micro with so many IO pins seems to fit well. Also, I suspect someone has tried to take this machine apart before, which is why the mic cable is cut and the connector pads to the bluetooth module is missing...
21:40 so amazing the hours of work that went into designing that from the first stages, until manufacturing, to it's long life, and all that to eventually end up in parts on Daves desk so we can admire it :) It's funny too how literally all of it was dug up from the earth. Humans are the ultimate recyclers!
I've used the ICS chips before, it is almost definitely a clock generator. It's harder to find information about their older products since they got bought out by IDT. Plus, with a name like "ICS" they were never very Googleable. "You're looking for ICs? Of course you are!"
That's a sweet machine actually. The specs are pretty close to those 10.1" Atom N270 netbooks. You should be able watch RU-vid videos at 480p and play Return to Castle Wolfenstein.
I had an OQO Computer like this and it was not to bad for it's day with just being able to play world of warcraft and a few other games on the GMA graphics.
Don't know what you're talking about - after watching the first 1 1/2 minutes this device looks pretty cool to me... (although i never heard of it before)
To think in 2009 I was using an MSI U100 Wind Netbook with an even slower Intel Atom N270 as a home/school laptop. RU-vid used to lag unless I had it in full screen, most flash games would lag, but it ran GTA SA on low settings. I even remember running Windows 7 HE in a Virtual Box VM on the thing.
Dave, That CPU from Intel at that point of time had a higher TDP wattage and you can not design a fan-less cooling solution thermal design for that form factor.
Even today a lot of phones and tablets will throttle under heavy load, I think Dave is a little hopeful about how efficient many of today's processors are let alone one that old.
Procs from that era often didn't throttle much at all until either the load dropped or they got too hot but it wasn't bad as machines back then had bulkier cooling than most now days. Sony should have done a better job with the cooler in this machine though, same garbage cooling as my HP TC1100 :/
protip, ALL intel x86 parts after the p3 should have S-spec numbers like the SL9LC seen here, thats all you need to look up cpu's and chipsets most of the time.
Intel chips of the time were notoriously (and hilariously) power-hungry and hot. AMD had a big head start on variable frequency scaling and thermal envelope management. I had an even older (486SX!) Fujitsu Point 510 tablet, similar battery life situation even with monster NiCd cells. ARM, of course, has pretty much always won on performance per watt and resulting thermals for embedded solutions, but as Microsoft's efforts demonstrated, both at the time and since (Surface RT fiasco) modern, general purpose OSes weren't quite up to par until Apple got in that game.
MeakerSE Until Intel attempted to start developing 64-bit chips. Pure-x64 Itanium… not so hot, vs. AMD's mixed-mode. (Us OS/kernel developers still have that bizarre legacy to this day as syscalls need to implement three different interfaces…) Also bridge integration onto the CPU die, HyperTransport and friends, … AMD fairly frequently wipes the floor with Intel in terms of R&D time to market. No question they're in a bit of a slump at the moment, though. Back in the day AMD was quite the breath of fresh air vs. buggy Cyrix chips. Oh, the clone wars. They were real. ;)
I used to own the Sony Vaio U810 (the convertible laptop version of this device) back in 2008, it had a better half-chiclet keyboard and touchscreen display. It was actually quite usable at the time, even upgradable to Vista :D You can get a dock for the expansion port with several USB ports, VGA, ethernet, audio and power, or a little dongle with just ethernet and VGA.
OMG Dave, thanks! I love old stuff like this. Gut it and put a pi3 in it with a little daq board. Battery life: 6 days! My bet is the h8 did just about everything in that thing but the Windows. Like the video controller in cellphones that does most of the work until you load an app and the CPU gets involved.
Any luck on the Renesas micro controller? I believe similar was described in the schematics of Thinkpad T60. Handling system stuff like battery voltages and temperature. However i did not find it on my variant of T60.
given the alternatives available at the time i'd say sony made the right call with the core solo it is just that the umpc is too ahead of its time the atom processor released 2years later struggled with performance that it wasnt that much of a better solution
In 2005-6 there was a horrible siege of Windows CE laptops, with ARM CPUs (mainly xscale). Intel was not commonly seen in small comouter devices, so i think this computer was state of the art in processing power in its time.
They were most probably limited by the processor tech at the time, during the era that that was built Intel chips were pretty much the worst chips for power consumption, in the x86 world, Geodes and such existed but their performance was pretty crap, might have been marginally better with a Pentium M but those still ran pretty hot.
The Sony "Motion eye" AKA Sony Vaio UX180P was a decent machine for field work/dispatch. I sold a ton of these to a field service company with a custom XP app to keep track of dispatches, inventory, record keeping, invoicing. At the time 2005ish there was not much around hand hold wise. These had cell modems cameras, touch screen and were fairly responsive. This single unit allowed the field agent to document images of everything before starting work, scan parts, get authorization signatures, document images after work, and then everything was automaticaly updated at dispatch. Nice units in all, but I agree the keyboards were dog snot.
Hmm, funny. I had that hard-drive in my iPod 5G, the WiFi card and the chipset in my laptop. What a weird concoction of technology. No wonder it ran so hot. The fun thing about those old CPUs, is that the chipset used more power than the CPU
At 1:15 you mention that Sony Memory Stick is dead. Not quite true. The Sony Memory Stick isn't dead yet. I use the Sony 32 Gbyte Memory Stick PRO-HG Duo HX high speed (MSHX32B/M) with my full frame Sony a7 mirrorless e-mount camera. From my experience it is very very reliable (Made in Japan). It writes 50 MBytes/second which is great for burst shooting and high bitrate video. However it is very expensive 60€. It is still available new everywhere. At the price of four times bigger 128 GBytes SD. But quality and reliability isn't. You get what you paid. The Sony ultraportable UX series was a dream machine ten years ago. However the Asus EEE first netbook appeared a little later at a fraction of money. Very small and highly expensive ultraportable PCs from Sony and Toshiba wasn't admired so much afterwards.
One of the jobs I had we were on call sometimes and the company had something similar to this with cellular internet built in. These were right before net top things came to market, wifi wasn't everywhere, regular laptops were still big and heavy and we didn't all have smartphones. So it actually came in handy being able to load up the company ticket system or log into a server anywhere.
Around the same time VIA made low power (for the time) x86 processors, that allowed small fan less PC's to be made, they were almost the same form factor as this Sony machine if memory serves me. Troubles is they were low powered in both meanings of the word, low power consumption and gutless. It's amazing how much stuff has shrunk down in 10 years, look at the wifi chipset on the single board computers compared to that big old thing that plugged in to the mini pci express, even that cards that plug in to that interface are about 1/4 of the size these days, you need a magnifying glass to see the one on the Raspberry Pi3.
X86 processors are inherently inefficient, so fans will be needed. On the other hand the ARM processors don't need all the extra hardware that X86 does since they are pure RISC design, so they run cooler.
The unit is a "parts bin" of broken parts. It clearly has been thrown around, and that explains why the Bluetooth-module connector is ripped off and missing.
Looks like a nice pc, None of this "Tablet android" or "Windows Tablet" ball crap, more like mobile desktop with physical buttons & Windows xp! I like it :P
I'd still love to have one of these just to throw in the collection, for the pure novelty of it. I remember seeing this at a SONY Store and just it blowing my mind over how compact it was. I think it was something like $1400 back then.
Honestly, I would of LOVED to have one of those when they were new. This was really their answer to the BlackBerry. A one up. "Oh, you can do multimedia and have a keyboard? How about we put A WHOLE PC IN THIS! bam!
Just a heads up I honestly did not look through the comments too far, however the slXXXX numbering is what the actual part number is. should get an ark.intel.com url.
uCs are very common in laptops and such. they are usually used for logic to control the voltage regulators, sensors and other low level stuff. Louis Rossmann talks about the Mac use of them in his videos a lot.
I actually had one.... (newer model) actually still have it... it is today running OSX. Biggest drawback for me was the keyboard... as you say... pretty much useless. Did use it for a year or for doing "onsite" service on railway radio systems adn with some scripts it was useable... but in the end, too little battery life (4.5 hours with the big battery and linux) I still wish they would make a uptodate version of it.
I'd still like a portable computer like that with a real keyboard. I wonder if it would be doable with mSATA SSD and some mobile processor. But in todays tablet world, it would most probably be a DIY project.
Nobody wanted this kind of an architecture? Seriously!? Why I am still waiting for the model that I am interested in to go below at least 500 USD on eBay, I wonder ...
hey, about that 16bit MC, it is not a surprise at all, such a controller or similar (or a specialized one, sometimes not programmable) is in EVERY laptop/computer motherboard, usually it is called keyboard controller or embedded controller. Keyboard lines connect to it, also mouse, it also controls the power sequence and power states (sleep, etc), fan speed, leds, backlight brightness, the power button also goes to it, and so on. It connects with the southbridge (you called it IO) through LPC bus.
+EEVblog 8:55 Yes, in part. The CPU (Core Solo U1x00) alone had a TDP of 6W's, then throw in the ICH and everything else and it doesn't look pretty. Not even talking about the display, or the hard drive (3.3V0.5A) and so on. Looking at modern SoC's with eMMC NAND and you can accomplish similar specs with a heck of a lot less power consumption. Edit: Well, I guess the actual problem was trying to run x86 in this form factor back in 2006/2007. 2014-2016 not a problem but back then? Ehhh..
For Intel processors, the S-spec number (SL9LC on that chip) is the best to look up by: ark.intel.com/products/spec/SL9LC Looks like it pulled 5.5W. It's an ULW part for the time, so I doubt they could've done much better, heat-wise, for 2006.
Cingular wireless was a mobile phone provider that went through many changes. It started as bell south mobility, then cingular wireless, at&t mobility and finally now at&t wireless. Oh and btw that extra antenna was for cellular internet.
Dave, obviously the BT connector has been broken off, like many other pieces in this abused machine. Also, there's clearly a screw that holds that WLAN module to the hard drive frame, and it's pretty obvious that some sort of antenna was stuck on that "connector" on the back. I've never seen the rear of one of these, much less the internals. What happened on this one?
Next time if you want to decode a intel cpu or chipset there is dedicated url for that and a short string: ark.intel.com and then search on the SL string (SL9LC) ;)
I would suspect installing a solid state drive and make that a Linux portable platform would just rock, dock it use a bigger screen and mouse keyboard combo. Htpc.
I have one of its successors: SONY VAIO Duo 11. Working judt fine with Windows 10 and Gentoo Linux. Horrible BIOS, ssd failed, its only fan failed, but after 3+ years it's still providing a good 24x7 service at home.
I knew a stock broker who owned two (maybe three) of these and would use the WWAN feature to work while traveling. I specifically recall his complaints about battery life and the keyboard.
Yo Dave, the "expansion port" you mentioned is Sony's own proprietary DisplayPort. Because you gotta have your own HD multimedia interface to compete with.. well.. an HD multimedia interface!
I am messing with a ux280p in 2021. Fun still. And wow, this video is no tear down, its a search and destroy mission. That busted up unit was worth at least 100
