Hi welcome to Teardown! Tuesday It's Retro computer. Time again, not that retro. We're talking about a 2006 2007 vintage. Sony Vaio And look at this thing.

it's a pocket. Well, it's a portable computer. Sony's idea of what people wanted in a portable computer in 2006. Um Intel X86 architecture so it is actually a Pcs got Bluetooth wireless LAN and it's got dual camera on it, the Sony Mou shinai on that front and back like this.

it's got speaker and can do all sorts of whiz-bang staff. headphones, external mic, everything else and this pretty horrid slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The feel on this is just awful. Thank you very much to Chris for sending this in to the previous mailbag segment.

Obviously it's seen better days with the screen there so it doesn't work. We've got a button missing up here. it's all cracked around here and well, let's see what this puppy has to offer, shall we? It's the UX series and this is the UX to ADP Vgn - UX 2 ATP For those playing along at home, it's got the Sony memory stick Pro The choice of Champions back then, is anyone still using the Sony memory stick anymore? Anyway, it's got a capture button for the camera and it got a pretty terrible battery life of only a couple of hours. Chris said.

And really, it was. You know, two thousand dollars, up to two and a half thousand dollars. Something like that. It just completely missed the mark and it flopped.

Nobody wanted a PC in this kind of form factor and you know you just gotta think about the design meeting where they came up with this and what people wanted I Don't know. Maybe they hired some focus groups or something like that and yeah, this is the result. Anyway, you know we say you're on the Eevblog. Don't turn it on.

Take it apart. Wrong screwdriver. Hang on. Maybe one of those ya know? probably might need a little teeny top ones.

Here we go. Don't turned on. Take it apart. We got one USB port on here and look at this.

Looks like we have a Sim Wow look at that. add everything 64k smart chip singular. I've got no idea. is that a service provider in the US or wherever Christmas from um I Don't know.

Hmm. so this is what's known as an ultra micro portable computer and well, yeah. I don't recall anyone ever actually using one. I ran Windows XP and you know it probably did.

Okay, but you were limited by the tiny little pissant screen on the thing and they're really, horribly, probably not very usable. QWERTY keyboard Anyway, let's try and take this apart. Does it have the usual Sony arrows on there? Hmm. Anyway, we'll find out.

Oh II Just had four screws there. Don't tell me, it's that easy. It is that easy. We're in like Flynn Check it out.

All we've got is one cable going up here. What's that that is? That could be for an antenna I'd be assuming because that feels like a coax E type cable and we've got the got the built-in hard drive. Now this some newfangled, solid-state rubbish. Toshiba Thank you very much and that's a 40 gig 4200 rpm.

Drive And that's just going to come out. presumably that was upgradable, so any I will undo that. But yeah, we're going to see lots of tight integration inside this thing at Node Out, and we can see lots of tons of flat Flex ribbon going everywhere already. So oh, there's our mic down in there.

Is that in it? Yeah, it's got a little rubber dump it. just - what? It like it's been chopped. What the what on earth? Anyway, Yep, that's been chopped. Um, it does have a rubber surround on it which just stops a vibration coming through when you're holding it and stuff like that coming through to the mic.

That's always a nice touch, but you'd expect to see that. I Am not sure what this is going to. this little flat flex here just flapping around in the breeze and it doesn't seem too made up with anything on there. So what's doing there? look I Just tried to take out the hard drive bracket there and I'll tell you what.

this whole thing. everything looks very, very modular. That's obviously our Wi-Fi module there. and well, yeah, they go see yeah.

Antenna note: There's our Wi-Fi antenna cable up there. so we've got bluetooth and Wi-Fi of course, but looks like this whole whole lot just might lift out. It's going to be very, very modular, but it's tightly packed. Nice fit to envelope design that's for sure.

Nothing wasted. They've got a rubber surround on the hard drive here. Stop in the noise and vibration there so that's a that's a real nice touch and also impact because you're going to drive. You know, end up dropping this thing at so you want to take that out.

Absolutely. But yeah, there we go. It's going to flip out. I Wearing my Flynn as our Intel's at our processor and we've got a fan inside this thing.

I Wonder if this was noisy? That's a real shame to have a fan inside like a micro. PC Like this, couldn't They have just engineered it a bit thermally, a bit better and got the heat out. I Mean you hold the thing? you could dissipate, have an aluminium back or something like that. but yeah, fan, that's just a it's a complete cop-out I Don't Yeah, um, apparently the hard drive is dead or is just Paul dead I Don't know.

Hmm. so this Wi-Fi module connects to via those flat flexors up under there. I should just be out it in theory. pull those off on this is not going back together so if it does, it come out, how to Z Up it slides out there we go.

It slides in like that trap for young players. So yeah, that's all very nice. And there's the wireless module. It's an Intel Pro Wireless 39:45 for those playing along at home, tell you what? So one's had a crack at this hard drive? Look at that.

Oops. Turns out that is not our processor, that's the I/o controller. That's the Intel IC H7u series that does pretty much everything the processor doesn't do. it does.

USB IDE Audio the flash interface a PCI Clock Power Management you name it, it's in there that for all the world, looks like a magnesium alloy frame. so that's very nice attention to detail. I Thought this was really interesting to begin with. I Thought I Look, they've got the USB connector surface mount and they just put it in there and they just reliant on the pressure of the pads.

the hold down the USB but no, it's actually been. The pads have been ripped off and that wasn't me. Hmm. and they've got some custome expansion type header.

probably going to some doggy type thing down in there and you flip that away. And bingo. There's our power circuitry dead giveaway with the big ass inductors there, the tantalum caps, and everything else. So that'll be generating the five or half a dozen different rails we need for this silly thing.

And sure enough, this whole thing does actually flip out fire. Get rid of that ribbon cable. There just a few things tying it in. Got a ribbon cable down on the bottom down in there.

It's uh. there we go. We're there. we go.

Look, that all comes apart brilliantly. It's a fantastic modular design. There's our fan. Okay, so that was coming out the bottom there.

There's our grill down there, so that's a little squirrel cage fan. And look, we've got ourselves a copper heat pipe coming over here from our processor is almost certainly under there. That's the thing that's getting hot. I Mean that's why they didn't get much battery life out of this thing.

It was too running too hot. Technology wasn't good enough and well, yeah, and you got a few hours use because just got too hot. You've got to get the power out in a micro. PC Yeah, poor choice.

so you could ask. Were they limited by the processor technology at the time or did they try and push it too hard and get too much performance out of this micro? PC I Don't know, you know, were their hands tied? Okay, we have to put this in this Micro PC form package. we have to put the fan in and we need this amount of cool in and everything else. Anyway, they haven't wasted a huge amount of space in there, so that is very nice indeed.

And if we flip this puppy up, ah, there's all our memory bingo down in there. What brand? Danya So there's our GSM phone module. there's our Sim socket right there. And then we've got a Sony Ericsson Ee 52 phone module.

And I guess that answered the question. Where does that little what was on the back here? That's the antenna. That's the GSM antenna right in there and it looks like I had an external GSM antenna connector. There.

is it Strange-looking Actually, if you take the cover off there, that Coax is just going up. Yeah, - that external connector there. So where is the where's wally? Where's the regular Gsm antenna? Hmm. So you go and decode those DRAM numbers if you want.

but that's gonna be yeah. I Believe this model was one gig. so that's just enough to run Windows XP on a device like this. It did.

Yeah, it'll work alright. let's lift up this and get a look at our processor. There it is. We have another big whoop.

Yep, we had a little thermal pad on the bottom of there that just connects down to that baby down there. Don't know what that is, but there's our little copper. Is that gonna? Yep, that's gonna pop off. Let's remove that and we're in.

like Flynn. There we go. There's our copper pads that's not pasted on the bottom of there. They got themselves a big thermal pad.

Look at that that's actually quite thick. So yeah, that's gonna have a bit of loss in that. Anyway, does the business Here We go. Let me show you a close-up Okay, it's quite difficult to get the number on this one, so excuse me.

but I've had a look at it under the Mantis and that is this is the 945 GM express a chipset. So this is the memory controller. No surprises though. It's right next to the memory here and graphics as well.

It's not fancy pantsy graphics, it'll do VGA and you know, not much else really. So it's designed for mobile devices like this. but yeah, um, that's dude. it's a bigger die then the processor that the physical die itself bigger and there's nothing on the die there.

But if you look up our Le 805 3/8 you actually get a seller on em at 215. but it's not that. But if you actually go to the Intel website and do a search for Le 805 3/8 you get what matches this one the You 1500. or it's actually if you look at the wiki page for this Sony product, then you actually this model is supposed to be the U 1400 at 1.2 gig.

but it's obviously the You 1500. so I don't know they upgraded or wiki's wrong Wikipedia could be wrong. Hmm. Anyway, 1.3 gig.

It's nothing special. It's designed for, you know, mobile devices like this. It's got a pass mark if you're into that sort of thing, a 327 and me. you know it's good enough for the job in here, but obviously not low enough power to get away without that heatsink and audio there For those playing along at home.

Not too fussed about that, but that's pretty much all she wrote. Looks like we've got some core power supply stuff happening around here for the processor, but for this main board, that's basically it. So we've got the processor, graphics, and memory controller, main system memory. We've got our I/o controller over here.

What's this puppy? did we look at that? I can't remember. Well, that's a real surprise. that's a Renesis H8s Series two, triple one, 16-bit micro. what's it doing there as sort of like some sister system glue processor, miscellaneous stuff I Don't I Wouldn't have expected to find another 16-bit micro one there.

that is fascinating. Hmm. any guesses and that one tucked away in there is a Texas Instruments PCI 84 one - it's a card bus controllers and that I see L9, Lpr Three two one. Not exactly sure.

couldn't pull up anything that at first suck of the south. but yeah, if I can I'll pull something up. but by the looks of it, there's our crystal. Look, we've got termination resistors coming off here so I would say that is some sort of clock driver clock.

Jen Well, this module here I swear I didn't do anything I has that like what? what the? what's going on? What on earth is going on there? It's there, is no connector. What? huh? Anyway, you guess what that is that's the Bluetooth controller. the Ug Pz6 there. Um, but be my look at that.

I'm this is bizarre under that plastic cover there as though antenna. For your antenna aficionados. you go. it's another Bobby Dazzler Oh, nice and symmetrical.

So now I've separated the screen from there and there's nothing much else doing in there near. Who cares what's going on there. We've got our Sony memory stick interface. nothing much doing it down there for the bluetooth interface and that would just be going over to the lousy keypad on there.

Actually, the keyboard might be interesting. Look at this Tada. there's our tactile domes. There we go and we've got some LEDs to light up.

Dewy looks like it. but yeah, they're pretty wimpy tactile domes. I mean this thing by basically has almost no tactile feedback. It's it's pretty horrible.

You can ah it was were it's it's better when you when you don't have this on it and you can actually get your finger right around the key like that. They should have actually had it like that because when you put this on it's like your finger hits the surround and it just feels like there's nothing there. You take that away and it's actually a half reasonable tactile response. For those who don't know how they manufacture these, they actually just put the pads down on there and you get attacked oil domes embedded in there like that.

The little last snap downes you get them from companies like a snap Tron for example maker really good ones but yeah, they just sticks over the front like that. Easy peasy! Now I've actually looked into these for how small they can actually make the pitch between these and I think I was trying for five millimeter pitch or I don't know something is some ridiculously small pitch for my mark to Scientific Calculator Watch and I went to the manufacturers of these tactile dome membrane overlays and I was just going noop noop to smaller pitch and yeah, that's like bleeding edge stuff and things like that. So yeah, if I had the luxury to have one, this would jeez. I would you're that? That's that's.

pretty jazzy I Like that and this is where the mechanical engineers have to come in again to develop this sliding mechanism which hopefully comes off. Ah, I did take the screws off I swear there's some screws embedded under there. But yeah, there's a lot of disciplines of engineering which go into developing this thing overall, let alone just the display module and it'll come out somehow. Ah, screws on the side I think today we're in like Flynn well kinda sharp.

There you go. Sony didn't roll their own there. they sharper one of the leaders in LCDs So they obviously developed the controller and of course that would be a sharp LCD as well. you can see the who I like the little snakey flex going off.

there isn't that cute. We'll flip that up and move that out. You can see the hotbar attachment there. classic hot bar technique going over to the flat flex.

They'd have that chip on board chip on flex drivers here for the actual white LCD itself. and there's our speaker and one of those a fingerprint readers. Is it? they were. They're pretty crusty.

but yeah. anyway, give me and they've got one camera there on that board and then they have another board here which board board interconnect goes to our second camera. on the yeah, that's the back one or more of US patents. Well yeah, that looks like more than one to me.

that's a sharp display model number for those playing along at home. It looks like they've really stuck that board down with some earth double sided tape. That is really, they've gone to town on that. Anyway, there's nothing more to see there.

As I said, there would be chip on flex drivers under there for the rows and the columns and I don't know what resolution screen that is. So there you have it. That's a look inside the yacht Sony UX to ADP or VG n UX to ADP Micro PC from about 2006 2007 vintage and I believe it was pretty much a flop. I stand to be corrected.

but if you had one of these and you thought it was the Ducks guts or if you're still using one, let us know anyway. Um I Hope you can appreciate the amount of engineering and that goes into this thing. I Mean it's not just electronics designers, you know, designing the circuits, laying out the boards, everything else, just the fit to envelope mechanical engineering design that went into this I was very little wasted space. the systems engineering and everything else involved in this thing.

The thermal engineering we've got. You know, the graphics and the mechanical displays and the keyboards and the slidy screen and the whole kit and kaboodle thang. It's just incredible amount of engineering. Must have taken a lot of different discipline teams to work on something like this and get it going and how you would actually start off designing something like this.

My guess is that would they'll come up with the shape concept like this and then they would go right. Yet this is what we won't be one ourselves. a sliding screen and what? the keyboard. We wanted to be able to hold it like this so you can use your thumbs like this and the screen slides up and we want Wi-Fi And we want Bluetooth In We want Gsm and we want this processor and we want this and that and hard drive and all sorts of you know requirements would come out of that.

And then the system designers are going to go right. Scratch your head right, how do we fit in this? Well, let's start with our base board like this, but our processor takes too much power so we need to engineer a thermal solution for it and then that's got to fit inside. We need a battery. What out? What is our battery solution going to be like That would be the one of the first things that could change during the design process.

They could go. Oh look we. we were really good at fitting everything in and we've got more space. so let's put in a bigger battery for example or something like that.

So that could have changed or it could have gone. We need maybe they wanted a bigger battery and then these systems designers went. No, we don't have enough room because you're bloody gave us this processor and we need to put in this thermal solution. And we need to do this.

And you want it all this sort of jazz. We don't have the room. You're going to make the battery smaller and that could have you know, rather than scratch and throw their hands up and scrap the project and go, oh no, this isn't going to work. They just go.

Okay, let's do a smaller battery. We'll just change the specs for the battery life. Who cares if it's not good enough and people aren't happy with it? Whatever. There's so many design decisions that come into producing something like this and is absolutely phenomenal.

so my hats off to the design team. I Love these. Um Sony Tear downs. They do systems engineering really really well.

So anyway, hope you enjoyed that. If you did, give it a big thumbs up and all that sort of jazz and discuss down below. Catch you next time. Hi! welcome to a hopefully short teardown of this Sony E-mount lens here.

This is from my next 5t camera Here we go. Oh there we go. Yeah, look hey Whoa. Yep.

there we go. Hey, it's rotating up. That's great. Wobble in the camera a little bit and and look I'll actually pick it up and start shaking it around.

and there you go. You can see the steady shot.