EEVblog #914 - Sony VAIO UX Micro PC Teardown

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

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 133,659

Rating: 4.7193818 out of 5

Keywords: eevblog, video, sony, vaio, ux280, ux series, micro pc, handheld, pocket, review, desing, teardown, retro, vintage, intel core solo, processor, thermal design

Id: FGIGUBYJLn8

Length: 22min 44sec (1364 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 23 2016