The most surprising benefit of getting an OLED TV was how much better the experience of watching 4:3 content was. The true black of the sides really helped remove attention from them. Watching at night in the dark, it may as well be a 4:3 screen.
I still have my C1XS Picturebook. It's a fantastic machine. 400mhz PII, 64mb ram, upgraded to a 40gb hard drive. It has a firewire port and i used it to edit broadcast video for my job at a news station. No one in my high school was ready for me to pull a "laptop" out of my Echo jeans pocket! Let alone then edit video on it... They actually have regular laptop "thin" hard drives. Mine will boot from USB floppy, and from PCMCIA CDROM, but couldn't get it to boot from USB to IDE adapter with a CD drive. So i ended up dumping the install files for 98SE to the hard drive on a second partition, boot floopy, cd d:, setup. Never had a 98SE install go that fast! Camera was terrible in mine, too. They were competitive at the time with low cost webcams, i would say. The fact that it was built in was the hotness.
that's an absolutely wonderful anecdote. Even with my experience editing video, even on these machines, and even to an extent *at the time*, I would not have expected it to work as well as it did here, so I can believe that it was totally doable in a pinch now. What a wild time to be alive, working in a field like that, and that particular level of nerdy (if you don't mind my saying :p)
@@CathodeRayDudeOh i was definitely nerdy. I was "that guy". Getting pulled out of classes to fix teacher's computers since 6th grade - the Apple II days, and left over Tandy RLX1000s - which i still have two of!
@@CathodeRayDudeMy machine was the Pentium II, but it ran DivX and AVI files just fine, despite being only a 400mhz, with 64mb ram! The Transmeta chips were hot garbage! Their power consumption was impressive tho.
@@CathodeRayDude that camera actually looked better than some of the fake stuff that advertised higher resolutions and shipped with 8mb cam instead of the 2million mb pixels or whatever it is they advertised lol
39:18 What makes this more amazing is that you're not running OG Golden Axe from 1989, running on the Sega System 16B (the board that the Genesis was based off of), you were playing the arcade-exclusive sequel, Revenge of Death Adder, which ran off of the much more intense System 32 hardware. Even with the graphical glitches and imperfections, being able to run that at full speed on MAME on a 20 year old PC is honestly nothing short of amazing, especially on the Transmeta Crusoe.
To clarify, most of those glitches are down to it being an older version of MAME. The System 32's scaling and transformation effects were a bit janky until a couple of years ago, I remember getting a big nostalgia hit when the (actually mediocre) Spider Man game was free of obvious glitching.
I'm immersed in nostalgia. Back when I was in junior high, I stumbled upon a C1R at a second-hand hardware shop, fell in love at first sight, and cherished it dearly. Its portability, being able to take it anywhere, was incredibly handy and I have fond memories of that. I haven't thrown it away yet, so it's probably still lying somewhere in the warehouse.
Sony was a market leader in this stuff all throughout the 90's until Jony Ive got his hands on the computer design industry. The industrial designers at Sony had a way of making devices like these have a presence while keeping the looks almost the exact same no matter what the design of the device was. That takes some serious effort. Props, Sony.
On one hand, it's very sad to see Sony leaving the PC market. Even the last Vaios were still unique and interesting, the only ones that seem to follow on the novel concepts they used to do is the ROG laptops. On the other hand, all of their computers were always driver hell so good riddance.
@@Fay7666 Steve Jobs actually went to Sony with MacOSX on a Viao (quite a well known story) which Sony turned down saying they've already perfected Windows on the viaos. They simply just couldn't be bothered to rewrite drivers for Unix in my opinion.
How is OSX not lighter than windows? Windows still supports 16 bit, 32 bit and 64 bit and uses an ancient filesystem. Even HFS that Apple was using at the time was quicker than MSDOSFat. @@richardhunter9779
@@richardhunter9779 early OSX was absolutely heavier than WinXP, but 10.4 and 10.5 were much lighter than Vista. It made sense as a decision early-on, but by the middle of the decade was perhaps a bit more dubious.
Couple of notes on VAIOisms... First, I think (it's been a while) that blinking battery indicator was normal. IIRC, it double-blinks when it's charging, stops blinking when it gets close to full, and stays lit solid when you're running from battery. It'll start slowly blinking (50/50 duty cycle) again when the battery gets low. Something like that. Firewire CD-ROMs were definitely a Sony thing. I have an R505, which was a Pentium III laptop that had a removable "media dock." That means it's a really thin laptop if you don't need floppy and CD drives, but it levers onto a second bottom-half that includes those drives, and replicated ports on the back. The optical drive (combo DVD-ROM / CD-RW drive) is actually connected via Firewire. There's no cable or anything, it's just part of the bespoke dock connector on the bottom, but that's the protocol it uses. This is noteworthy because it has consequences: I'm not sure how you would support it in DOS (by this point, I don't think it mattered much -- you could choose Windows 2000 Pro, but mine shipped with the new version of Windows called XP.) And if you didn't have the dock, you were in a world of hurt. USB boot wasn't supported. Just internal IDE, Firewire, and floppy.
The key to removing gross decomposing rubber and adhesive is to use WD40 first, then you can use isoprop or regular detergent to remove the WD40 residue. This case didn't seem too bad, but there's lots of adhesives that won't lift off with just a solvent. WD40 first solves that problem in one step. Remember this for those terrible stickers that leave a residue behind, WD40 is your friend.
The worst day of my life was when I decided that, what with WD-40 being my friend and all, it would obviously be great for cleaning mechanical keyboards.
@@therealchriscunningham if you felt like disassembling the switches and cleaning them, you might get the clicks back 😅 depending on whether the sharp click geometry just got too-lubricated, or whether you melted something.
I'm really annoyed that the new mini machines aren't like these. These had no gimmick (except maybe the jog dial and their silly memory cards), and were just good laptops.
oh my god the ants. I have like 4 traps set up and they still get into shot sometimes. it's just a "western washington at this time of year" thing, exterminators say there's nothing we can do to keep them out, but man, it's frustrating. I did my best to keep them out of the video but I knew I'd miss one.
@@CathodeRayDudeI tried the advion ant gel this year and it greatly reduced the number of ants crawling around. I believe it's what exterminators use instead of traps. Raid max liquid traps worked last year, but didn't help this time.
I tested some Transmeta machines ages ago, and my main conclusion was that the Crusoe was a _weird_ chip. The code morphing it did was extremely workload-sensitive: the machine might be struggling with one task, and you'd try another expecting to get similar results, and while you usually would, it was far from unknown for the machine to sail through it at several times the speed you'd expect given the earlier outcome. I don't remember if they were able to get those speedups more consistently with updates, but it may be fun to look into. Fun video--thanks!
I have a Transmeta Crusoe based thin client I use for retro gaming, its fantastic once you know its limitations, its a shame it didnt get more future versions that cover newer instruction sets
2:45 fun fact the now standard 16:9 ratio was first proposed by SMPTE in 1984 specifically because it was the geometric mean between Cinema ratio and 4:3, a "mathematically ideal" compromise between the two
I would've thought it was cool, and honestly, compared to my desktop PC of the time it probably was faster, but man it would've been so expensive and kinda useless within 3 or so years.
I find these videos weirdly comforting. I have never had any friends into any sort of pc gaming or repair. Seering someone have 5he same insticts about making a pc work and using it is strangley good. I dont know if i can explain it.
The Transmeta Crusoe is actually a very interesting CPU. Ars Technica has a pretty good article from the year 2000 that explains some of how it works so differently from your garden variety x86 CPU.
as nice as the wide monitors like this are, displays with a vertical resolution lower than 768 pixels have so many issues with programs. In fact, that's why that oddball 1366x768 resolution was created- as a compatibility resolution for widescreen displays! So many legacy applications just outright crash if they can't do at least 1024x768. So while the 1280x600 screen looks fantastic, there are so many limitations to that kind of thing and that probably limited their longterm viability (well, that and panel availability in general. Can't imagine there being many manufacturers of ultrawide 600p panels)
The interface on that camera software makes me think of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer wins some boudoir photography and the first thing the photog does is turn off the lights and slather the lens with vaseline ;)
Dude I looked for a good history video about the Crusoe from like Asianometry or something, but there is NOTHING. You could do the Internet a real solid with one.
You know what, I keep forgetting that phones often technically have ultra wide displays, and I need to keep that in mind when I eventually do my video on this subject. Thank you!
@@CathodeRayDude "technically" is pretty fair when you're talking about cinematic things. I know that a couple of directors etc complain that viewing things on a phone is not fair to things designed to be watched in a theatre.
@@CathodeRayDudeSony Xperia 1 III technically has a '4K' display at 21:9 ratio for pocketability, watching movies, shooting video, and using it as a external camera monitor. Though, the UI renders at 1080p and the only way you can get 4K is to push directly to the GPU's framebuffer. They basically cut off the edges of the 4K resolution.
I love these little guys, as borderline useless as most of them might be these days. I used to use a very small Dell with a ten-inch, ultra wide screen with a 3rd generation i3 CPU and 6GB of RAM permanently affixed to the motherboard so you couldn't increase the amount without going through a great deal of trouble. I did get rid of the 750GM mechanical hard drive and swapped it for a Samsung EVO SATA solid state drive with 2TB of space on it. It's my mini media player. I use it to watch videos and listen to music, and when I need a 4th screen for doing school assignments it's great for displaying a webpage of two. It's definitely a little clunky and I've spent a little time, money, and effort just to get it useable and keep it that way, but I get way more use out of it than I thought I would when my mom asked me if I wanted it before she took it to the e-waste center.
I had one of those (C1VP) back in high school in 2001. It was so cool to have a laptop that small. I kept it in my backpack and took it everywhere. It came with ME, but upgraded it to XP once it came out. It was painful getting the drivers for the jogdial, hotkeys and camera to work, but after playing with different versions from different models, I finally figured out a set that worked. Used a CD travel case as a bag for it.
I had one of those Sony USB floppy drives in my data center “rescue” kit along with a couple of boot floppies, usb serial adapter, a null modem adapter, a cat5 and an rj11 cable along with other miscellaneous crap for whatever server rescuing needed to be done.
I had the Pentium one and then the first Crusoe one with a brand new battery and cardslot wifi card (and cardslot CD ROM) - loved them, was the perfect machine to run a Primera disc printer at work in a cramped space cos it was so small it could sit on top of the damn printer. The hinges are the weak point, and the old one which used a small proprietary fragile rectangular DC jack. Worked fine with Windows 2000, the LCD was really good for the time too
I miss my PictureBook C1X - the original model that was available in the US with its Pentium MMX 266 MHz and 64 MB RAM. The various models were significantly different.
37:37 The Firewire port on the laptop is the 4 conductor version that doesn't supply power, so I guess having the extra DC out jack makes sense if they couldn't or didn't want to fit the full size 6 conductor Firewire port
I've had luck doing the following to replace feet in these types of cases: 1) Buy a tube of silicone gasket maker from Harbor Freight. The black kind. 2) Spoot some out on a piece of waxed paper. 3) Put another piece of waxed paper on top of it. 4) Use a credit card to flatten it out to the right thickness for your needs. 5) Wait a day for it to dry. 6) Peel the waxed paper off to retrieve your silicone sheet. 7) Use X-Acto knife to cut out the shaped feet that you need. 8) Get some of that double sided tape meant to keep cats from scratching up your furniture, and use that to stick it to your footless device in the foot holes.
@7:11 I was just moving my two TiVo HD units and they also have feet that have not only melted and disintegrated into just shreds of plastic, they appear to have eaten through the paint of my TV stand. Bizarre.
“NATURALLY….” *Muscle memory action off camera and a pause* Back into frame with a FireWire beast😂😂 Thank you for making these, they’re much more therapeutic than you know.
The PictureBook was the first laptop to have a webcam installed as standard. On the IBM PC110 PalmTop, Canon had produced a specific PCMCIA card webcam (eventually for other laptops top) for it that may predate the Vaio. And yes the ThinkPad 850 or 860 may have a webcam before the vaio, but not standard, it was an expensive upgrade.
Nice video. As for me, I’ll take pillar boxing all day over bars on the top and bottom. Full height looks better than having dead space above and below. And no stretching the image, ever.
I love these "let's mess around with some neat electronics" videos. It is very relatable and interesting to listen to. I hope that you enjoy creating this kind of content.
Goo-Gone is the best when you're dealing with _adhesives_ because it will dissolve them. With IPA, you might end up lifting it off the case, but it'll just ball up whatever the old label's media was (paper, e.g.), and leave sticky residue behind. OTOH, stuff like this, IPA is very effective. Except, yes, it'll remove ink -- whether you intended that or not. If you've got a sticky mess on a label, you're just going to have to choose whether you want it clean, or intact. I also use Krud Kutter, which works GREAT for removing general environmental nastiness from plastic and metal. It doesn't tend to damage anything you care about. It's just a cleaner. My 2c.
Thanks for the input, I appreciate it! I've heard of Krud Kutter a couple times, I'll check it out. And I wonder if the goo gone might do better with some really unfortunate soft-touch I'm dealing with on another machine...
For screens, I find that Windex tends to streak more than Sprayway Glass Cleaner, that I think came from Costco. That stuff is magic. It also really helps with picking up dust and cat hair, that tends to just wad up and stick on the edges of where you wipe with a plain damp (paper) towel.
3:20 It's of course subjective, but pillarboxing is perfectly fine by me IF the backlight of the screen isn't turning it light grey. If it's black or near black (like with OLED), it's fine. Or the "Ambient Mode" that UA-cam does nowadays (or that we did ourselves with e.g. Philips hue lamps and their HDMI box) which makes the borders colored in a way that works with the scene. But yeah, Pillarboxing on some mid-2000's TN display is distracting :)
there's nothing that annoys me more than the fact that early oughts laptops hold a charge basically forever, but my laptop from just a few years ago can't hold a charge for more than a day.
Strictly a suggestion, but I love watching your videos for the nostalgia of the old computing tech. You're sound effect for the pop-up tidbits made me remember VH-1's Pop-up Video series. I would personally love to see info tidbits in the Pop-up Video balloon style for the sake of same era nostalgia 😀 Though I highly doubt you'll read this comment. Keep making great vids man, they're great with or without!
With win xp you can do a straight up clone of your c: drive to a usb adapted ssd drive and swap them. That way you can keep the original hdd un modified in a safe place and speed up the pc 3-5 times (in my experience), that is if it is a sata drive interface. To find a pata/ide ssd is harder but still possible, the speed gains how ever tend to be less on those. Maxing the ram would also make a significant speed difference to the system. I´d love to see the vaio brought to the best it can be in a follow up video.
I had what was I think the lowest end colour PDA that Sony offered at the time, a Clie SJ-22 and even at that end of the market it was a great device. Rugged, excellent design and usability for a sub-$200 price. The jog wheel was a great addition to PalmOS. I got it in Fall 2003 and carried it everywhere with me daily right up until I got my first smartphone in 2010.
For cleaning, white gas/lighter fluid. Smaller containers from Zippo or similar, or by the gallon from Coleman, as examples. Good for taking label adhesives off, not likely to damage printing and paints.
Always use blue window cleaner (refuse to call it Windex, because over here the prominent brand is Glassex) and a sheet of the cheapest noname kitchen roll. It has never flithied up or damaged any screen I cleaned with it, which is a lot. Be it glossy or matte, touch or nontouch, glass or plastic, LCD or CRT, it always cleans absolutely perfectly fine. Blue cleaner doesn't dissolve any protective layer, as it isn't alcohol based. I think it's more of an ammonia-based mixture actually, and ammonia is surprisingly mild.
@@robertbackhaus8911 If that's true, it probably still counts as "mild". And it seems fine if you clean a screen no more than a few times per year. Just don't sneeze into your screen all the time, I suppose.
Another option for slightly less solvent-y cleaners is good old wd-40. I'm sure it has weird interactions with some stuff but I've found it to be between isopropyl and windex in aggressiveness. It also nicely inactivates adhesive.
Amazingly, I have had really good luck with hand sanitizers! The alcohol content works just like it did in this video, but (maybe only some and not all) plain unscented hand sanitizers have glycerol which in this context acts as a mild soap.
The Transmeta Crusoe was actually a special RISC processor that had special low level software running on it dubbed "code morphing software" that dynamically recompiled x86 instructions into it's native RISC ones, by taking shortcuts, combining multiple operations into one, and learning which instructions frequently get used and adapting to execute those faster. It will literally learn as it executes code to run that code faster the next time. It was actually really cool. Intel actually ripped off the design for their Atom line of processors, and got caught and sued by Transmeta, and I spoke to the engineer that discovered this theft. Transmeta ended up licensing it to Intel and this is now in the underpinnings of all Intel Core CPUs from the mid 2000s onward. Do you remember how the whole x86 industry hit a wall in the mid 2000s? Well it was Transmeta's technology that is to thank for modern Intel CPUs, which are all now actually RISC chips with translation layers over-top emulating the older CISC Intel x86 instruction set.
The idea that x86 in the mid-2000s and was saved by Transmeta's technology is hard to believe. Intel was running into a wall with the P4 design, and even IBM was struggling with a lack of generational gains in the Power architecture, instead pushing up clock speed at the cost of heat. AMD were doing well though, and they carried the momentum from the Athlon 64 (introducing the AMD64 instruction set) into multicore CPUs with the X2. What actually happened was that CPU manufacturers realised that clock speed gains were no longer a given and instead they needed to focus on efficiency gains and concurrency. This change wasn't all that unexpected, multi-cpu systems already existed in server and workstation hardware, and Intel had introduced Hyperthreading in the early 2000s. Parallel was just where things were heading already.
Intel Atom wasn't announced until March 2008 and came out in June that year. Even 45nm Wolfdale Core2 Duo's like the E8400 and E8500 were already available in January 2008 and Yorkfield Core2 Quad's like the Q9550 came out in March 2008 (or November 2007 for Yorkfield XE C2Q QX9650). Intel's first internally RISC-like x86 CPU was the Pentium Pro in 1995 and most Intel CPUs have been like that ever since.
Modern x86 CPUs are barely anything like the Transmeta chips. A lot of the stuff such as decoding and optimization that is done in software on the Crusoe is done in hardware, and Intel was already doing this prior to the release of the Transmeta chips (since the Pentium Pro). There's no underlying VLIW core to be found, they produce micro-ops. In some sense, you could call that an "underlying VLIW core", but in principle you could write software that runs directly on the Crusoe (which is, in essence, what CMS is). You can't really write software in microcode on modern CPUs. More than anything else, modern x86 CPUs (and even modern high-performance ARM!) look more like a cleaned up and optimized hybrid of the Pentium M/Athlon 64 and Pentium 4. Moreover, the Transmeta patents in question aren't specific to their architecture at all. Some of them are even about out-of-order hardware execution of instructions, which I believe their CPUs don't use.
Minor mistake, the efficieon DID have a sort of speculative register file thing. It still was an in-order CPU to which out-of-order scheduling hardware patents would not apply.
In its defence, the P3 celerons where an extremely good deal at that time. Especially shortly after with the Tualatins, I skipped the entire P4 era rocking one of those.
I bought a P4m laptop and liked it so much that I went with a P4 desktop. Prescott to be precise. I almost swore off of Intel after that. I had no idea that P4m and Netburst were so completely different.
It's not so much that the Firewire port didn't have the power to run an optical drive from the bus, it's more that the connector Sony used for IEEE 1394/Firewire is only the 4 pin variety which AFAIK is signalling only, there's no significant power delivery present. Hence the weird secondary DC out port.
Had a slightly bigger Crusoe powered Fujitsu laptop back in the day (11.6" rings a bell, that might have been the laptop that replaced it). Was replacement for a Toshiba Libretto so I was quite used to slow. Was my main laptop for about 3 years. Think Centrino killed them off. Really good for power consumption. I travelled a lot. Ran MAME great.
I have a very similar laptop with a Crusoe 5800, a Fujitsu Lifebook P2110. I really liked it at the time. It was running NetBSD an was able to watch AVIs and DVD. The screen was very similar to this Sony. Great video!
ISTR the Crusoe supposedly could "learn" from running programs how to optimize its working, so the first run would be atrocious, but would improve with iterations. If I remember well, they had for a time a rather famous engineer you might have heard of, named Linus Thorvald who once built a little i80386 OS, nothing professional.
that's one use out of these smaller laptops is to play SD video on them, but if you have a 30 series or later Nvidia GPU some browsers are supposed to communicate with the dgpu to remaster SD video for larger HD screens... so far laptops are the best way to watch content that isn't 1080p (or even a tablet)
pillar boxing, imho, is less of a problem with something like oled, where the black pixels in the pillars are just off, and not giant grey blocks to the side. in a dark room watching a movie/show, it's difficult to notice unless you're picking nits
Remove manufactured by Smith and Nephew is a medical grade adhesive remover that is used to remove bandage adhesive from humans. It is by far the best adhesive remover I've used in my professional life and it's gentle enough for most plastics
Rubberized coating and rubbers of that ilk in general can be maintained by applying silicone, dish soap or some similar kind of oil to the part and letting it dry on the part in question. These things often go bad because they lose moisture over the years. You don't need to do it quite often when using the product because the oils from your skin will take care of that.
The Picturebook C1xn I had included a 266MHz processor, a 4Gb hard drive, a 5Gb PCMCIA hard drive, swapped with the modem and Ethernet card and had a 1024x480 screen. The screen was bright, sharp and looked far better than the limited resolution suggested. I used it to code on my train journey in the morning and evening working. I had an iLink DVD drive but the cables and lack of a deck on the train meant it was impossible to watch a movie. The web camera rotated from front facing to rear facing and I used it as my first "digital camera". On the side it had a little wheel that ran through various set up options and volume control. It is still working, in a museum now where as later Vaio laptops have died.
I’ve been using my Vaio for a few projects recently. It’s not as cool as this (just a generic thing from the BX line) but even that makes me go “dang, Sony made cool computers”. Fingerprint reader? Yes. Cool memorystick reader? Yes. Dock? YES! Nice metal chassis? Yes. All round a classy machine.
I wonder if the performance of the Transmeta is less of a hardware problem, and more of a software problem. I doubt that Windows was properly optimized with it in mind.
17:52 You gotta be careful with isopropanol. Its got basically no surface tension so it seeps through everything. I ruined a steam deck like this, where the iso got inside the screen, its got water damage looking marks now between the LCD layers and its been like this for 6 months so its likely not gonna dry out completely. Only use as much as you absolutely need when working on electronics.
i'm really surprised how few comments i've gotten about the fan noise, I thought it would put a lot of people off but nobody seems to mind. glad you enjoyed!
I recently purchased a Vaio from the same era and it too came with an oddly partitioned drive. With a 10 gb partition and nearly empty 8gb partition on a 20 gig drive
Never had a Sony Vaio laptop, netbook or otherwise but I've always liked the blue-ish purple-ish color scheme and the fact that Sony always did things just a little different than other computer manufacturers.
I have a transmeta c1 picturebook, i love using it to run vintage games because what a ridiculous thing to play games on. As a teen I LUSTED after the picturebook, tiny computing has been a dream of mine since i was young and gpd finally made it happen
17:14 Sorry for being That Guy, but "Gaussian" is pronounced "GOW-see-un" (ˈgau̇-sē-ən) not "GOSH-un". It is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose last name rhymes with mouse, not moss.
One of my dad's work laptops had exactly the same issue with the nub: any input would result in it slowly creeping to the top-left. I think it went away with exercise like it did here, but I don't remember for certain. It was a mid-90s IBM ThinkPad. I wish I still had his old work computers. His first laptop had an absolutely appalling purple monochromatic display with horrendous ghosting - the kind of thing that renders mouse trails kind of a necessity - but I still played games on it (mainly Lemmings from what I recall). It was computer beige and I believe it was a Compaq. The second was a "luggable" - a big heavy box with a keyboard that clipped off the side to reveal its full colour screen. The keyboard cable was coiled like telephone handset cord and at it was a massive step up in power. I used to play Doom on it, including multiplayer with my cousin. I don't recall the brand, but it was dark grey and I think it has a fairly impressive array of ports on the side. Then it was the ThinkPad. Or maybe there was a sequence of a few? Hard to say since they look pretty similar. It was long before they added the trackpad, but it did have a CD drive, which was exciting, and the rubber on the nub gradually wore away until the post stuck through. It had some sort og rapid application development platform on it (Borland Delphi I think); poking around the example projects in that was how I learnt about powers of two and using bitmasks to efficiently store flags (they weren't presented in binary, so I had a delightful moment of discovery when I realized how the powers slotted in around each other without interfering with one another). I'm not really going anywhere with this. Just reminiscing.
D-Limonene, the active ingredient in Goo-gone and Goof-off, amongst other adhesive and residue removers, is extremely effective but can also melt certain types of plastics. It's also exceptionally good at ripping the dye out of things like printed labels, so I don't recommend using it on those kinds of things. But if you do happen to have a problem of labels and adhesive on things it doesn't dissolve, then limonene is a fantastic solution for them. It also dissolves chewing gum, butyl rubber, some types of resin, and a variety of other compounds. Great stuff to have around. Just remember to store it well because the vapor pressure of limonene isn't particularly high, so it's quite volatile and will happily evaporate away from a poorly sealed container in the same way that mineral spirits will disappear on you. On a side note, you can actually make a putty-like plastic filler out of limonene in a similar way to acetone by just dissolving a bunch of styrene into it until it forms a very viscous and sculptable goo. Pack it into whatever needs filling with a putty knife and then wait for the limonene to evaporate.
Damn it, now I've got the "let's ask the internet" jingle stuck in my head. I'm humming it, I'm whistling it, I will probably eventually try to play it on my saxophone
loving this laptop, had one in my uni days, mine was c1vj I think, its from the time when sony was coool. mw was the one that I wanted but it was too expensive
When I do cleans like this I'll start dabbing around all the problem areas with alcohol and let it sit a bit while I swap to windex and go to scrubbing with that; usually as I come to the areas I've added alcohol there's enough to have an effect but not enough that coming to it with scrubbing will hurt paint.
I've had great results removing shmoo with Coleman camp fuel (AKA white gas or naphtha). I otherwise use it to make contact cleaner with oleic acid and mineral oil.
I've never considered using a recovery disk for a single moment. I just figured it was full of bloatware, and I can pull the drivers and software from the website, after a clean install of windows. But I can see how it would be valuable here, to show what things would have been like out of the box.
Exactly, if I had this machine at the time I would have wiped it seconds after it came out of the box, but when looking at it from a historical viewpoint it's important to me to try to achieve the most "intended-market consumer" experience possible.
I had a similar one (Sony Vaio TR2MP) around 2004. I bought it used at a computer market in London. It was surprisingly good. The camera, for the time, was great (you have to remember that webcams were still not that common and mostly rotten potato quality). It was great to watch movies on long flights. IFEs back then still had tiny, low-quality screens, and limited content selection. The battery was enough to be practical during an overnight 16h flight (probably 4hs+ of video playback, can't remember exactly). I sold it after the Windows XP SP2 came out, as it became so slow that it was almost unusable. I sold it for the same price I had bought it (try to do that with any laptop that's not an Apple. Vaios were good).
I had a C1VN picturebook back then. It was good enough at performance for my Linux needs and it had amazing battery life and portability. My old university webpage about running Debian on it is still online.
I owned the VERY FIRST NEC Ultralite with the 2mb silicon hard disk. It was the first, and for a short time, the only true notebook computer. I absolutely loved it lithium-metal exploding battery and all. This machine reminded me of that. Ahead of its time.
![I eliminated CD swaps FOREVER. [Nakamichi MJ-5.16]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/oRuhRfvIkn0/mqdefault.jpg)
Yay! The "Let's Ask the Internet" jingle wasn't a one-off joke! I love this level of inter-episode consistency!
I love it! Though he didn't say the laptop was the perfect size 😭
The most surprising benefit of getting an OLED TV was how much better the experience of watching 4:3 content was. The true black of the sides really helped remove attention from them. Watching at night in the dark, it may as well be a 4:3 screen.
Part of the reason why I love watching stuff on an OLED phone.
LCD have come a long way, but they still don't match OLED for dark room viewing. I would never go back to one at this point.
I still have my C1XS Picturebook. It's a fantastic machine. 400mhz PII, 64mb ram, upgraded to a 40gb hard drive. It has a firewire port and i used it to edit broadcast video for my job at a news station. No one in my high school was ready for me to pull a "laptop" out of my Echo jeans pocket! Let alone then edit video on it...
They actually have regular laptop "thin" hard drives. Mine will boot from USB floppy, and from PCMCIA CDROM, but couldn't get it to boot from USB to IDE adapter with a CD drive. So i ended up dumping the install files for 98SE to the hard drive on a second partition, boot floopy, cd d:, setup. Never had a 98SE install go that fast!
Camera was terrible in mine, too. They were competitive at the time with low cost webcams, i would say. The fact that it was built in was the hotness.
that's an absolutely wonderful anecdote. Even with my experience editing video, even on these machines, and even to an extent *at the time*, I would not have expected it to work as well as it did here, so I can believe that it was totally doable in a pinch now. What a wild time to be alive, working in a field like that, and that particular level of nerdy (if you don't mind my saying :p)
@@CathodeRayDudeOh i was definitely nerdy. I was "that guy". Getting pulled out of classes to fix teacher's computers since 6th grade - the Apple II days, and left over Tandy RLX1000s - which i still have two of!
@@alexcrouse hahaha, literally the same thing, I was being called into other classrooms to fix computers! apple iis sometimes, even!
@@CathodeRayDudeMy machine was the Pentium II, but it ran DivX and AVI files just fine, despite being only a 400mhz, with 64mb ram! The Transmeta chips were hot garbage! Their power consumption was impressive tho.
@@CathodeRayDude that camera actually looked better than some of the fake stuff that advertised higher resolutions and shipped with 8mb cam instead of the 2million mb pixels or whatever it is they advertised lol
Loving the new Let's Ask the Internet jingle. Serious homestar runner vibes
"How do you type with boxing gloves on?"
And that's the end of this segment. Note that it's 'Let's ask the Internet' NOT 'Let's answer the Internet'.
@@Toonrick12 ?
@@PoosaycvmImagine the comment being voiced by Strong Bad, it'll make more sense
He should Have poured some Mountain Dew on it
And the "Let's Not Ask the Internet" jingle in one of the previous videos, that is just "Let's Ask the Internet" backwards.
39:18 What makes this more amazing is that you're not running OG Golden Axe from 1989, running on the Sega System 16B (the board that the Genesis was based off of), you were playing the arcade-exclusive sequel, Revenge of Death Adder, which ran off of the much more intense System 32 hardware. Even with the graphical glitches and imperfections, being able to run that at full speed on MAME on a 20 year old PC is honestly nothing short of amazing, especially on the Transmeta Crusoe.
That wasn’t at full speed. But close to it.
To clarify, most of those glitches are down to it being an older version of MAME. The System 32's scaling and transformation effects were a bit janky until a couple of years ago, I remember getting a big nostalgia hit when the (actually mediocre) Spider Man game was free of obvious glitching.
I'm just confused why does the emulator run better than the OS it's being launched from.
@@segarallychampionship702
Probably McAfee hogging RAM and HDD.
I'm immersed in nostalgia.
Back when I was in junior high, I stumbled upon a C1R at a second-hand hardware shop, fell in love at first sight, and cherished it dearly. Its portability, being able to take it anywhere, was incredibly handy and I have fond memories of that.
I haven't thrown it away yet, so it's probably still lying somewhere in the warehouse.
Sony was a market leader in this stuff all throughout the 90's until Jony Ive got his hands on the computer design industry. The industrial designers at Sony had a way of making devices like these have a presence while keeping the looks almost the exact same no matter what the design of the device was. That takes some serious effort. Props, Sony.
On one hand, it's very sad to see Sony leaving the PC market. Even the last Vaios were still unique and interesting, the only ones that seem to follow on the novel concepts they used to do is the ROG laptops.
On the other hand, all of their computers were always driver hell so good riddance.
@@Fay7666 Steve Jobs actually went to Sony with MacOSX on a Viao (quite a well known story) which Sony turned down saying they've already perfected Windows on the viaos. They simply just couldn't be bothered to rewrite drivers for Unix in my opinion.
@@megatronskneecap Eh, you wouldn't want to depend for software on your main competitor and OSX is not lighter than Windows, so that makes sense.
How is OSX not lighter than windows? Windows still supports 16 bit, 32 bit and 64 bit and uses an ancient filesystem. Even HFS that Apple was using at the time was quicker than MSDOSFat. @@richardhunter9779
@@richardhunter9779 early OSX was absolutely heavier than WinXP, but 10.4 and 10.5 were much lighter than Vista. It made sense as a decision early-on, but by the middle of the decade was perhaps a bit more dubious.
Couple of notes on VAIOisms...
First, I think (it's been a while) that blinking battery indicator was normal. IIRC, it double-blinks when it's charging, stops blinking when it gets close to full, and stays lit solid when you're running from battery. It'll start slowly blinking (50/50 duty cycle) again when the battery gets low. Something like that.
Firewire CD-ROMs were definitely a Sony thing. I have an R505, which was a Pentium III laptop that had a removable "media dock." That means it's a really thin laptop if you don't need floppy and CD drives, but it levers onto a second bottom-half that includes those drives, and replicated ports on the back. The optical drive (combo DVD-ROM / CD-RW drive) is actually connected via Firewire. There's no cable or anything, it's just part of the bespoke dock connector on the bottom, but that's the protocol it uses. This is noteworthy because it has consequences: I'm not sure how you would support it in DOS (by this point, I don't think it mattered much -- you could choose Windows 2000 Pro, but mine shipped with the new version of Windows called XP.) And if you didn't have the dock, you were in a world of hurt. USB boot wasn't supported. Just internal IDE, Firewire, and floppy.
The key to removing gross decomposing rubber and adhesive is to use WD40 first, then you can use isoprop or regular detergent to remove the WD40 residue. This case didn't seem too bad, but there's lots of adhesives that won't lift off with just a solvent. WD40 first solves that problem in one step. Remember this for those terrible stickers that leave a residue behind, WD40 is your friend.
thanks I’ve been having this problem
The worst day of my life was when I decided that, what with WD-40 being my friend and all, it would obviously be great for cleaning mechanical keyboards.
@@therealchriscunningham what happened
@@elephystry it de-clickied it. which is bad for the clicky.
@@therealchriscunningham if you felt like disassembling the switches and cleaning them, you might get the clicks back 😅 depending on whether the sharp click geometry just got too-lubricated, or whether you melted something.
"this video isn't about too much"
>Checks runtime
😂
Been loving the recent content! Keep it up 😃
this video is a Certified Cathode Ray Dude Short Video
Cathode ray dude always comes through!
Man sony design language from the era was so good
it's the GPD win about 20 years earlier
Gpd win-10
I have a Win-3 and it really feels like the Vaio UX
(That i wanted as a child. But the win-3 exactly can be used)
I'm really annoyed that the new mini machines aren't like these. These had no gimmick (except maybe the jog dial and their silly memory cards), and were just good laptops.
@@alexcrouse the win is there a gaming line, you sound like you want the pocket
I love that a video which "isn't about too much" is nearly 45 minutes long lmao. I love this channel.
@13:51 RIP ant
oh my god the ants. I have like 4 traps set up and they still get into shot sometimes. it's just a "western washington at this time of year" thing, exterminators say there's nothing we can do to keep them out, but man, it's frustrating. I did my best to keep them out of the video but I knew I'd miss one.
@@CathodeRayDudeI live in a basement so the ants waking up and trying to get into my kitchen is the real sign that spring is here.
@@CathodeRayDudeI tried the advion ant gel this year and it greatly reduced the number of ants crawling around. I believe it's what exterminators use instead of traps.
Raid max liquid traps worked last year, but didn't help this time.
Genuinely thought that was just a little bug on my screen heh
A pyrethrum-based spray will keep them out. Anything with an exoskeleton will not cross that perimeter, and is completely safe for mammals.
I tested some Transmeta machines ages ago, and my main conclusion was that the Crusoe was a _weird_ chip. The code morphing it did was extremely workload-sensitive: the machine might be struggling with one task, and you'd try another expecting to get similar results, and while you usually would, it was far from unknown for the machine to sail through it at several times the speed you'd expect given the earlier outcome. I don't remember if they were able to get those speedups more consistently with updates, but it may be fun to look into.
Fun video--thanks!
I have a Transmeta Crusoe based thin client I use for retro gaming, its fantastic once you know its limitations, its a shame it didnt get more future versions that cover newer instruction sets
2:45 fun fact the now standard 16:9 ratio was first proposed by SMPTE in 1984 specifically because it was the geometric mean between Cinema ratio and 4:3, a "mathematically ideal" compromise between the two
whoa, really? do you happen to have a citeable source, that'd be a great one to have when i get around to the video i wanna make!
@@CathodeRayDude its in the wikipedia page for "16:9 aspect ratio" there's a whole bunch of detail there
literally 1984
2 decades ago, it was my dream laptop. thanks bro.
I would've thought it was cool, and honestly, compared to my desktop PC of the time it probably was faster, but man it would've been so expensive and kinda useless within 3 or so years.
I find these videos weirdly comforting. I have never had any friends into any sort of pc gaming or repair. Seering someone have 5he same insticts about making a pc work and using it is strangley good. I dont know if i can explain it.
The Transmeta Crusoe is actually a very interesting CPU.
Ars Technica has a pretty good article from the year 2000 that explains some of how it works so differently from your garden variety x86 CPU.
as nice as the wide monitors like this are, displays with a vertical resolution lower than 768 pixels have so many issues with programs. In fact, that's why that oddball 1366x768 resolution was created- as a compatibility resolution for widescreen displays! So many legacy applications just outright crash if they can't do at least 1024x768.
So while the 1280x600 screen looks fantastic, there are so many limitations to that kind of thing and that probably limited their longterm viability (well, that and panel availability in general. Can't imagine there being many manufacturers of ultrawide 600p panels)
The interface on that camera software makes me think of that episode of The Simpsons where Homer wins some boudoir photography and the first thing the photog does is turn off the lights and slather the lens with vaseline ;)
thankyou so much for pausing the voiceover to let us listen to the XP login jingle - warmed my heart to hear it again.
Dude I looked for a good history video about the Crusoe from like Asianometry or something, but there is NOTHING. You could do the Internet a real solid with one.
Yup! Really enjoy watching cinema scope movies on my phone's 21:9 display. There's something special about it
You know what, I keep forgetting that phones often technically have ultra wide displays, and I need to keep that in mind when I eventually do my video on this subject. Thank you!
@@CathodeRayDude "technically" is pretty fair when you're talking about cinematic things. I know that a couple of directors etc complain that viewing things on a phone is not fair to things designed to be watched in a theatre.
@@CathodeRayDudeSony Xperia 1 III technically has a '4K' display at 21:9 ratio for pocketability, watching movies, shooting video, and using it as a external camera monitor. Though, the UI renders at 1080p and the only way you can get 4K is to push directly to the GPU's framebuffer.
They basically cut off the edges of the 4K resolution.
Not really sure how their recent Xperia 1 line function, though.
@@LibertyMonk we need fresnel lens viewing stands to extend the size, a-la Brazil.
or not...
I love these little guys, as borderline useless as most of them might be these days. I used to use a very small Dell with a ten-inch, ultra wide screen with a 3rd generation i3 CPU and 6GB of RAM permanently affixed to the motherboard so you couldn't increase the amount without going through a great deal of trouble. I did get rid of the 750GM mechanical hard drive and swapped it for a Samsung EVO SATA solid state drive with 2TB of space on it. It's my mini media player. I use it to watch videos and listen to music, and when I need a 4th screen for doing school assignments it's great for displaying a webpage of two. It's definitely a little clunky and I've spent a little time, money, and effort just to get it useable and keep it that way, but I get way more use out of it than I thought I would when my mom asked me if I wanted it before she took it to the e-waste center.
That's a perfect sized laptop! They shouldn't make them any bigger!
I had one of those (C1VP) back in high school in 2001. It was so cool to have a laptop that small. I kept it in my backpack and took it everywhere. It came with ME, but upgraded it to XP once it came out. It was painful getting the drivers for the jogdial, hotkeys and camera to work, but after playing with different versions from different models, I finally figured out a set that worked. Used a CD travel case as a bag for it.
Reminds me of this modern tiny laptop I have, it might only have a intel n100 in it, but it's able to emulate gamecube now with almost no problems.
I had one of those Sony USB floppy drives in my data center “rescue” kit along with a couple of boot floppies, usb serial adapter, a null modem adapter, a cat5 and an rj11 cable along with other miscellaneous crap for whatever server rescuing needed to be done.
Our tools don't say “Craftsman”, but they are craftsmen's tools.
i wish thisform factor would come back id love a chromebook like this
I saw this in a magazine ad once and boy I do sure want one.
Yet here I am typing on a tablet likely four times more powerful, if not more.
Yeah, I agree about the microfiber cloths. You just get little lint pieces on the screen unless the cloth is literally brand new.
I had the Pentium one and then the first Crusoe one with a brand new battery and cardslot wifi card (and cardslot CD ROM) - loved them, was the perfect machine to run a Primera disc printer at work in a cramped space cos it was so small it could sit on top of the damn printer. The hinges are the weak point, and the old one which used a small proprietary fragile rectangular DC jack. Worked fine with Windows 2000, the LCD was really good for the time too
I miss my PictureBook C1X - the original model that was available in the US with its Pentium MMX 266 MHz and 64 MB RAM. The various models were significantly different.
We are the priests
Of the temple
Of Citrix
All the cast-off computers
Fill these online halls
(Epic 15 minute prog guitar montage! 🎸)
37:37 The Firewire port on the laptop is the 4 conductor version that doesn't supply power, so I guess having the extra DC out jack makes sense if they couldn't or didn't want to fit the full size 6 conductor Firewire port
I've had luck doing the following to replace feet in these types of cases:
1) Buy a tube of silicone gasket maker from Harbor Freight. The black kind.
2) Spoot some out on a piece of waxed paper.
3) Put another piece of waxed paper on top of it.
4) Use a credit card to flatten it out to the right thickness for your needs.
5) Wait a day for it to dry.
6) Peel the waxed paper off to retrieve your silicone sheet.
7) Use X-Acto knife to cut out the shaped feet that you need.
8) Get some of that double sided tape meant to keep cats from scratching up your furniture, and use that to stick it to your footless device in the foot holes.
i love the transmeta chips, i want one to play w/sometimes, they might be terrible but they are so insanely cool in how they work
LOVED the Rush reference!
@7:11 I was just moving my two TiVo HD units and they also have feet that have not only melted and disintegrated into just shreds of plastic, they appear to have eaten through the paint of my TV stand. Bizarre.
“NATURALLY….”
*Muscle memory action off camera and a pause*
Back into frame with a FireWire beast😂😂
Thank you for making these, they’re much more therapeutic than you know.
The PictureBook was the first laptop to have a webcam installed as standard. On the IBM PC110 PalmTop, Canon had produced a specific PCMCIA card webcam (eventually for other laptops top) for it that may predate the Vaio. And yes the ThinkPad 850 or 860 may have a webcam before the vaio, but not standard, it was an expensive upgrade.
Nice video.
As for me, I’ll take pillar boxing all day over bars on the top and bottom. Full height looks better than having dead space above and below. And no stretching the image, ever.
I love these "let's mess around with some neat electronics" videos. It is very relatable and interesting to listen to.
I hope that you enjoy creating this kind of content.
Goo-Gone is the best when you're dealing with _adhesives_ because it will dissolve them. With IPA, you might end up lifting it off the case, but it'll just ball up whatever the old label's media was (paper, e.g.), and leave sticky residue behind.
OTOH, stuff like this, IPA is very effective. Except, yes, it'll remove ink -- whether you intended that or not. If you've got a sticky mess on a label, you're just going to have to choose whether you want it clean, or intact.
I also use Krud Kutter, which works GREAT for removing general environmental nastiness from plastic and metal. It doesn't tend to damage anything you care about. It's just a cleaner.
My 2c.
Thanks for the input, I appreciate it! I've heard of Krud Kutter a couple times, I'll check it out. And I wonder if the goo gone might do better with some really unfortunate soft-touch I'm dealing with on another machine...
For screens, I find that Windex tends to streak more than Sprayway Glass Cleaner, that I think came from Costco. That stuff is magic. It also really helps with picking up dust and cat hair, that tends to just wad up and stick on the edges of where you wipe with a plain damp (paper) towel.
4:10 - You state that you don't like pillar-boxing. Does that imply that you watch the video 'zoomed-in' or STRETCHED?
No, I just want it to be the native aspect ratio of the display. If I'm watching 4x3, I'd like to watch it on a 4x3 monitor.
@@CathodeRayDudeI recently watched The Justice League Snyder Cut on my new-to-me Sony WEGA 4x3 HD CRT TV. It just felt right.
3:20 It's of course subjective, but pillarboxing is perfectly fine by me IF the backlight of the screen isn't turning it light grey. If it's black or near black (like with OLED), it's fine. Or the "Ambient Mode" that UA-cam does nowadays (or that we did ourselves with e.g. Philips hue lamps and their HDMI box) which makes the borders colored in a way that works with the scene. But yeah, Pillarboxing on some mid-2000's TN display is distracting :)
there's nothing that annoys me more than the fact that early oughts laptops hold a charge basically forever, but my laptop from just a few years ago can't hold a charge for more than a day.
Strictly a suggestion, but I love watching your videos for the nostalgia of the old computing tech. You're sound effect for the pop-up tidbits made me remember VH-1's Pop-up Video series. I would personally love to see info tidbits in the Pop-up Video balloon style for the sake of same era nostalgia 😀
Though I highly doubt you'll read this comment. Keep making great vids man, they're great with or without!
With win xp you can do a straight up clone of your c: drive to a usb adapted ssd drive and swap them. That way you can keep the original hdd un modified in a safe place and speed up the pc 3-5 times (in my experience), that is if it is a sata drive interface. To find a pata/ide ssd is harder but still possible, the speed gains how ever tend to be less on those. Maxing the ram would also make a significant speed difference to the system. I´d love to see the vaio brought to the best it can be in a follow up video.
I love how surprised you were with how well it ran an emulator!
I just love Sony things from the 2000’s
Vaio tiny laptops. Clie PDA’s that look amazing. Freaking Aibo robots
I have a camcorder from 2006, the Sony Handycam DCR-HC46
I had what was I think the lowest end colour PDA that Sony offered at the time, a Clie SJ-22 and even at that end of the market it was a great device. Rugged, excellent design and usability for a sub-$200 price. The jog wheel was a great addition to PalmOS. I got it in Fall 2003 and carried it everywhere with me daily right up until I got my first smartphone in 2010.
For cleaning, white gas/lighter fluid. Smaller containers from Zippo or similar, or by the gallon from Coleman, as examples. Good for taking label adhesives off, not likely to damage printing and paints.
27:27, "I don't feel too good Mr. Stark..."
That Mame working immediately got me thinking about those super widescreen games that existed...
Always use blue window cleaner (refuse to call it Windex, because over here the prominent brand is Glassex) and a sheet of the cheapest noname kitchen roll. It has never flithied up or damaged any screen I cleaned with it, which is a lot. Be it glossy or matte, touch or nontouch, glass or plastic, LCD or CRT, it always cleans absolutely perfectly fine. Blue cleaner doesn't dissolve any protective layer, as it isn't alcohol based. I think it's more of an ammonia-based mixture actually, and ammonia is surprisingly mild.
I have heard that ammonia based cleaners are not good for plastic screens, as it slowly turns the plastics brown.
@@robertbackhaus8911 If that's true, it probably still counts as "mild". And it seems fine if you clean a screen no more than a few times per year. Just don't sneeze into your screen all the time, I suppose.
Another option for slightly less solvent-y cleaners is good old wd-40. I'm sure it has weird interactions with some stuff but I've found it to be between isopropyl and windex in aggressiveness. It also nicely inactivates adhesive.
Amazingly, I have had really good luck with hand sanitizers! The alcohol content works just like it did in this video, but (maybe only some and not all) plain unscented hand sanitizers have glycerol which in this context acts as a mild soap.
The Transmeta Crusoe was actually a special RISC processor that had special low level software running on it dubbed "code morphing software" that dynamically recompiled x86 instructions into it's native RISC ones, by taking shortcuts, combining multiple operations into one, and learning which instructions frequently get used and adapting to execute those faster. It will literally learn as it executes code to run that code faster the next time. It was actually really cool. Intel actually ripped off the design for their Atom line of processors, and got caught and sued by Transmeta, and I spoke to the engineer that discovered this theft. Transmeta ended up licensing it to Intel and this is now in the underpinnings of all Intel Core CPUs from the mid 2000s onward. Do you remember how the whole x86 industry hit a wall in the mid 2000s? Well it was Transmeta's technology that is to thank for modern Intel CPUs, which are all now actually RISC chips with translation layers over-top emulating the older CISC Intel x86 instruction set.
The idea that x86 in the mid-2000s and was saved by Transmeta's technology is hard to believe. Intel was running into a wall with the P4 design, and even IBM was struggling with a lack of generational gains in the Power architecture, instead pushing up clock speed at the cost of heat. AMD were doing well though, and they carried the momentum from the Athlon 64 (introducing the AMD64 instruction set) into multicore CPUs with the X2. What actually happened was that CPU manufacturers realised that clock speed gains were no longer a given and instead they needed to focus on efficiency gains and concurrency. This change wasn't all that unexpected, multi-cpu systems already existed in server and workstation hardware, and Intel had introduced Hyperthreading in the early 2000s. Parallel was just where things were heading already.
Intel Atom wasn't announced until March 2008 and came out in June that year. Even 45nm Wolfdale Core2 Duo's like the E8400 and E8500 were already available in January 2008 and Yorkfield Core2 Quad's like the Q9550 came out in March 2008 (or November 2007 for Yorkfield XE C2Q QX9650).
Intel's first internally RISC-like x86 CPU was the Pentium Pro in 1995 and most Intel CPUs have been like that ever since.
@@LordVarksonyour both right
Modern x86 CPUs are barely anything like the Transmeta chips.
A lot of the stuff such as decoding and optimization that is done in software on the Crusoe is done in hardware, and Intel was already doing this prior to the release of the Transmeta chips (since the Pentium Pro). There's no underlying VLIW core to be found, they produce micro-ops. In some sense, you could call that an "underlying VLIW core", but in principle you could write software that runs directly on the Crusoe (which is, in essence, what CMS is). You can't really write software in microcode on modern CPUs.
More than anything else, modern x86 CPUs (and even modern high-performance ARM!) look more like a cleaned up and optimized hybrid of the Pentium M/Athlon 64 and Pentium 4.
Moreover, the Transmeta patents in question aren't specific to their architecture at all. Some of them are even about out-of-order hardware execution of instructions, which I believe their CPUs don't use.
Minor mistake, the efficieon DID have a sort of speculative register file thing. It still was an in-order CPU to which out-of-order scheduling hardware patents would not apply.
In its defence, the P3 celerons where an extremely good deal at that time. Especially shortly after with the Tualatins, I skipped the entire P4 era rocking one of those.
I bought a P4m laptop and liked it so much that I went with a P4 desktop. Prescott to be precise. I almost swore off of Intel after that. I had no idea that P4m and Netburst were so completely different.
@@extrameatsammich Do you mean PM? Pentium 4-M was a regular Northwood chip, Pentium M was the good one.
It's not so much that the Firewire port didn't have the power to run an optical drive from the bus, it's more that the connector Sony used for IEEE 1394/Firewire is only the 4 pin variety which AFAIK is signalling only, there's no significant power delivery present. Hence the weird secondary DC out port.
Had a slightly bigger Crusoe powered Fujitsu laptop back in the day (11.6" rings a bell, that might have been the laptop that replaced it). Was replacement for a Toshiba Libretto so I was quite used to slow. Was my main laptop for about 3 years.
Think Centrino killed them off.
Really good for power consumption.
I travelled a lot. Ran MAME great.
I have a very similar laptop with a Crusoe 5800, a Fujitsu Lifebook P2110. I really liked it at the time. It was running NetBSD an was able to watch AVIs and DVD. The screen was very similar to this Sony. Great video!
ISTR the Crusoe supposedly could "learn" from running programs how to optimize its working, so the first run would be atrocious, but would improve with iterations. If I remember well, they had for a time a rather famous engineer you might have heard of, named Linus Thorvald who once built a little i80386 OS, nothing professional.
Fun fact, Linus Torvalds worked on the Transmeta Crusoe
that's one use out of these smaller laptops is to play SD video on them, but if you have a 30 series or later Nvidia GPU some browsers are supposed to communicate with the dgpu to remaster SD video for larger HD screens... so far laptops are the best way to watch content that isn't 1080p (or even a tablet)
pillar boxing, imho, is less of a problem with something like oled, where the black pixels in the pillars are just off, and not giant grey blocks to the side. in a dark room watching a movie/show, it's difficult to notice unless you're picking nits
Picking nits is kinda his whole deal.
@@CantankerousDave PIcking nits is what you do on an LCD. On an OLED the black border is 0 nits.
Remove manufactured by Smith and Nephew is a medical grade adhesive remover that is used to remove bandage adhesive from humans. It is by far the best adhesive remover I've used in my professional life and it's gentle enough for most plastics
interesting, never heard of that. I'll get some and give it a shot!
@@CathodeRayDude it is a little oily but it cleans up without too much fuss
Rubberized coating and rubbers of that ilk in general can be maintained by applying silicone, dish soap or some similar kind of oil to the part and letting it dry on the part in question. These things often go bad because they lose moisture over the years. You don't need to do it quite often when using the product because the oils from your skin will take care of that.
The Picturebook C1xn I had included a 266MHz processor, a 4Gb hard drive, a 5Gb PCMCIA hard drive, swapped with the modem and Ethernet card and had a 1024x480 screen. The screen was bright, sharp and looked far better than the limited resolution suggested. I used it to code on my train journey in the morning and evening working. I had an iLink DVD drive but the cables and lack of a deck on the train meant it was impossible to watch a movie. The web camera rotated from front facing to rear facing and I used it as my first "digital camera". On the side it had a little wheel that ran through various set up options and volume control. It is still working, in a museum now where as later Vaio laptops have died.
I keep hearing "100% Compatible" as the jingle Ashens came up with in one of his Fake Lego videos.
I’ve been using my Vaio for a few projects recently. It’s not as cool as this (just a generic thing from the BX line) but even that makes me go “dang, Sony made cool computers”. Fingerprint reader? Yes. Cool memorystick reader? Yes. Dock? YES! Nice metal chassis? Yes.
All round a classy machine.
vlc? how about tuhje good ol fashioned community codec pack?
I wonder if the performance of the Transmeta is less of a hardware problem, and more of a software problem. I doubt that Windows was properly optimized with it in mind.
17:52
You gotta be careful with isopropanol. Its got basically no surface tension so it seeps through everything.
I ruined a steam deck like this, where the iso got inside the screen, its got water damage looking marks now between the LCD layers and its been like this for 6 months so its likely not gonna dry out completely.
Only use as much as you absolutely need when working on electronics.
aww , this laptop is so pprecius, really loved seeing it shown of like this, honestly ideal style of machine
Despite the subtile fan noise in the background I love it! 💚
i'm really surprised how few comments i've gotten about the fan noise, I thought it would put a lot of people off but nobody seems to mind. glad you enjoyed!
I recently purchased a Vaio from the same era and it too came with an oddly partitioned drive. With a 10 gb partition and nearly empty 8gb partition on a 20 gig drive
Never had a Sony Vaio laptop, netbook or otherwise but I've always liked the blue-ish purple-ish color scheme and the fact that Sony always did things just a little different than other computer manufacturers.
that thing is adorable, I would have had so much fun with that thing back in the day!
I have a transmeta c1 picturebook, i love using it to run vintage games because what a ridiculous thing to play games on. As a teen I LUSTED after the picturebook, tiny computing has been a dream of mine since i was young and gpd finally made it happen
17:14 Sorry for being That Guy, but "Gaussian" is pronounced "GOW-see-un" (ˈgau̇-sē-ən) not "GOSH-un". It is named after Carl Friedrich Gauss, whose last name rhymes with mouse, not moss.
One of my dad's work laptops had exactly the same issue with the nub: any input would result in it slowly creeping to the top-left. I think it went away with exercise like it did here, but I don't remember for certain. It was a mid-90s IBM ThinkPad.
I wish I still had his old work computers. His first laptop had an absolutely appalling purple monochromatic display with horrendous ghosting - the kind of thing that renders mouse trails kind of a necessity - but I still played games on it (mainly Lemmings from what I recall). It was computer beige and I believe it was a Compaq.
The second was a "luggable" - a big heavy box with a keyboard that clipped off the side to reveal its full colour screen. The keyboard cable was coiled like telephone handset cord and at it was a massive step up in power. I used to play Doom on it, including multiplayer with my cousin. I don't recall the brand, but it was dark grey and I think it has a fairly impressive array of ports on the side.
Then it was the ThinkPad. Or maybe there was a sequence of a few? Hard to say since they look pretty similar. It was long before they added the trackpad, but it did have a CD drive, which was exciting, and the rubber on the nub gradually wore away until the post stuck through. It had some sort og rapid application development platform on it (Borland Delphi I think); poking around the example projects in that was how I learnt about powers of two and using bitmasks to efficiently store flags (they weren't presented in binary, so I had a delightful moment of discovery when I realized how the powers slotted in around each other without interfering with one another).
I'm not really going anywhere with this. Just reminiscing.
D-Limonene, the active ingredient in Goo-gone and Goof-off, amongst other adhesive and residue removers, is extremely effective but can also melt certain types of plastics. It's also exceptionally good at ripping the dye out of things like printed labels, so I don't recommend using it on those kinds of things. But if you do happen to have a problem of labels and adhesive on things it doesn't dissolve, then limonene is a fantastic solution for them. It also dissolves chewing gum, butyl rubber, some types of resin, and a variety of other compounds. Great stuff to have around. Just remember to store it well because the vapor pressure of limonene isn't particularly high, so it's quite volatile and will happily evaporate away from a poorly sealed container in the same way that mineral spirits will disappear on you.
On a side note, you can actually make a putty-like plastic filler out of limonene in a similar way to acetone by just dissolving a bunch of styrene into it until it forms a very viscous and sculptable goo. Pack it into whatever needs filling with a putty knife and then wait for the limonene to evaporate.
I wouldn't be opposed to more videos like this!
Built-in camera provides high-quality images!
Damn it, now I've got the "let's ask the internet" jingle stuck in my head. I'm humming it, I'm whistling it, I will probably eventually try to play it on my saxophone
...i would very much like to hear that lol
loving this laptop, had one in my uni days, mine was c1vj I think, its from the time when sony was coool. mw was the one that I wanted but it was too expensive
When I do cleans like this I'll start dabbing around all the problem areas with alcohol and let it sit a bit while I swap to windex and go to scrubbing with that; usually as I come to the areas I've added alcohol there's enough to have an effect but not enough that coming to it with scrubbing will hurt paint.
I've had great results removing shmoo with Coleman camp fuel (AKA white gas or naphtha). I otherwise use it to make contact cleaner with oleic acid and mineral oil.
25:10 Omfg that sent me into a fit at work 😂 🤣 ⚰️ ⚰️ I’m unemployed now.
I've never considered using a recovery disk for a single moment. I just figured it was full of bloatware, and I can pull the drivers and software from the website, after a clean install of windows.
But I can see how it would be valuable here, to show what things would have been like out of the box.
Exactly, if I had this machine at the time I would have wiped it seconds after it came out of the box, but when looking at it from a historical viewpoint it's important to me to try to achieve the most "intended-market consumer" experience possible.
I wish we had more machines in this form factor. Always been a fan of very unusual displays. :P
Been really enjoying the videos CRD! And just wanted to let you know ❤
I love this style of video. Just watching a fellow nerd explore and clean a new device :) thanks for sharing man!
The burner phone wallpaper got me
I had a similar one (Sony Vaio TR2MP) around 2004. I bought it used at a computer market in London. It was surprisingly good. The camera, for the time, was great (you have to remember that webcams were still not that common and mostly rotten potato quality).
It was great to watch movies on long flights. IFEs back then still had tiny, low-quality screens, and limited content selection. The battery was enough to be practical during an overnight 16h flight (probably 4hs+ of video playback, can't remember exactly).
I sold it after the Windows XP SP2 came out, as it became so slow that it was almost unusable. I sold it for the same price I had bought it (try to do that with any laptop that's not an Apple. Vaios were good).
I had a C1VN picturebook back then. It was good enough at performance for my Linux needs and it had amazing battery life and portability. My old university webpage about running Debian on it is still online.
I owned the VERY FIRST NEC Ultralite with the 2mb silicon hard disk. It was the first, and for a short time, the only true notebook computer. I absolutely loved it lithium-metal exploding battery and all. This machine reminded me of that. Ahead of its time.
Loving these past few videos of you just messing with stuff
Delightful. Thanks for making this video.