Lost Futures: Sony's Streaming... Camcorder Laptop?? [Vaio PCG-GT1]
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- Опубліковано 15 лип 2024
- This device - the Sony Vaio PCG-GT1 - encapsulates so many of my interests, offered so much - in its way - and reflects a future we could have had, but for once, are probably glad we don't. It's shocking they made something like this at all, and unclear what their ultimate goal actually was, so in the end, all I could do was review the thing on its merit. I'm not sure what that achieved, but I love this little machine regardless, so who cares.
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(The PCG-GT1 is also known as the PCG-211B)
Disk image:
(also, all the VAIO-specific programs are in a ZIP you can download separately)
archive.org/details/PCG-GT1-disk
Chapters:
00:00:00 The Mood
00:06:37 The Device
00:14:11 The Camera
00:33:00 The Platform
00:46:50 The Rest
00:54:03 The Problem
00:59:03 The Point
01:01:10 Outro / Credits
01:02:12 Demonstration footage - Наука та технологія
![A CD-R, that's only partly a CD-R [Ricoh Encryptease]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/_5ucImqdKbY/mqdefault.jpg)
Sony was doing a lot of crazy stuff at the time, like putting a PCMCIA slot, Bluetooth, a color photo printer, and even a web browser in their camcorders... in the late '90s and early 2000s!
Nice to see you here VWestlife. Love the channel!
PCMCIA was almost universal in laptops of the time. That's not to say accessories for one laptop would work in another, but the port was nearly always there.
@@christo930 You would think. :) Generic stuff like ethernet / WiFi / WaveLAN cards were generally Ok with drivers, but the OEM accessories like disk drives rarely worked across manufacturers.
I had a fax machine with an pcmcia for wifi....
@@domramsey Good old days.
Movieshaker was doing AI generated content 20 years ahead of its time and making better films than any of us college filmmakers were making in its day. I'm shaking and breathless after watching that skillfully edited masterpiece starring none other than Large Man Gibbs.
PS: we demand a TikTok channel exclusively providing Movieshaken videos
Yes! I honestly think this would take off on TikTok! It made me laugh so hard!
@@karenweiner1857 could definitely be recreated too good format
Nice to see ya here EJ
(except it's not AI, but pure algorithms)
Bro said he was shaking and breathless 💀
Proof of concept.
A streaming device in the 2000's was going to fail.
A new, unpolished processor was going to fail.
The whole idea was a failure, so why do it?
To learn if there was any salvageable part of the process.
Why try something new in 4 differet models that may fail, when you can slap it all in 1 device you expect to fail, and see what part of the product worked well?
SOMEONE was going to buy it because it's a Sony, so it wouldn't be a total loss, and it was an interesting experiment all said.
I love this take.
Believe me,if i had this device back then,i would,ve jumped all over the place,it would,ve lave at everybody for still using a pc,because i would,ve said to them “hahaha you do all your stuff on the pc and go on the internet on it aswell, well i can do it all portible with this hybrid sony device” so i really wish i had that sony hybrid device,
BUT i do remember when i got my motorolla phone back in 2000 with wap internet (alltrough they just gimmicky just called it internet) but man what was i sooo happy back then, i was like (wooow i cannot only talk to someone to the phone but also go on internet)
Men oh men,those were those futuristic awesome days😁😁😁
Yes indeed, the Sony executive in charge would've said the same thing.
In addition: We need something "advanced" to show at our shareholder's assembly.
It actually sold out at launch, so, they definitely got their value out of it from all the RnD.
CRD is on a roll. First 7 users on 1 PC in the 2000s, then the 90's AT&T metaverse, then the 80s desktop with the crappy GUI, then a laptop camera hybrid. This guy finds all the most obscure retro stuff and shows it on UA-cam. 10/10 youtuber.
I must say that I love that late-90s/early-2000s era of "portable consumer electronics" where we finally had the technology to really miniaturize some pretty cool multi use devices but hadn't really gotten the form factors and UI down yet. Post-iPhone devices are certainly more practical, but I feel they really lack the charm these older gadgets had.
Yes, and manufacturers were not yet determined to eliminate every single button and interface for a "cleaner" look. I still have my laptop from 2007, which has ALL the connections.
@@Ranger_Kevin I definitely need VGA out, DVI out, 4x USB 2.0 connectors and a CD-ROM drive in my day to day life 🙄
@@easyTarget2000 So i can't want any of that? It's not like anybody's saying thin and sleek laptops should die.
Love 80s and 90s electronics of all kind :))))) greetings from Poland :)))
@@sceerane8662 Exactly. The problem isn't that minimalist, thin-and-light stuff exists or is the most popular, it's the ever increasing lack of choice in consumer electronics. I wouldn't mind paying a premium to get the features I want, but they simply don't offer them because it maximizes profits and the economy of scale. They've realized people will still buy something that isn't really what they want when the other choice is having nothing at all. So much for compeition and 'voting with your wallet'.
The fact that the "behind the scenes" footage of the demonstration looks so great, despite being filmed on a cellphone, compared to the quality that this whole 4000 dollar camcorder....laptop... thing outputs. Just shows how insanely good and accessible camera/video technology has gotten the last 20 years.
and yet dash cams and laptop cameras are not really all that great
The laptop in my macbook smokes this laptop's entire gimmick
@@JessicaFEREM you have a laptop in your macbook?
@@johhnyknoxville3948that is mighty impressive if i do say so myself lol
I feel exactly what you mean by lost futures, these are the crazy devices I'd see in magazines that would spark my imagination about the future. Looking back, so few of those devices ended up catching on, many were never ever released, but they were strangely profound to me as a child, that the world was on the verge of changing in big ways.
This is Hauntology
We have witnessed the biggest technological evolution in our childhood. Unlike any generation before or after (so far).
What are you, one of those misery chicks?
⁶ txt hi ⁹*to
Yes Sony was a visionary Company from the beginning I have Sony products dating back to the 50s , I don't see their team doing a lot this anymore ! I mis this Era all I see is Apple and Samsung and Microsoft ads .
This machine feels baffling to me as someone who had already become a “retro-cyberpunk” by the time it existed. It definitely strikes me as being more for the cramped, space-limited, but super-connected Japanese market, where mini laptops and multifunction smart devices ruled the roost, and yet where high speed Internet (ISDN and up) were extremely common, the same kind of market where the Dreamcast & PS2 modems made perfect sense.
The Crusoe was always an interesting footnote in my life, even when it was new, because I could have a machine which was both a slow/older IBM compatible, and also an older Hackintosh, along with a reasonable machine to run Solaris - and all in one box. It all just worked. It’s interesting that Sony picked it for this use. Part of it, I’m sure, was the power consumption; but the sheer amount of proprietary software tells me that the first idea they had was to build a proprietary OS (or at least a heavily customized shell), rather than going with stock Windows. They were going to use the Crusoe the way it was really meant to be used - as a tool for lite OS development. But either they realized it would be a bad idea, or they wanted to release the Percast stuff for Windows anyway, or something else happened (maybe even MS stepping in because of how hard they were pushing Windows Me).
But definitely the fact that it’s also a working, contemporary, digital camcorder which is irrevocably tied to that Windows install is a major flex.
Indeed - it's obvious that the way Crusoe does things, it can't possibly match the speed of same clockspeed regular x86 CPU. It's not a failure, to have CPU that can do what Crusoe does (to support any architecture, including "virtual" ones like Java VM bytecode) you wont get the same performance with same clockspeed.
Heck, it's amazing product, but it's not even supposed to compete with regular CPU's in performance, and to criticize it for not having the same performance as Intel x86 (or M68k, or any other architecture CPU) at same clock speed is to me ignorant and totally missing on why it was still a great idea and great product in right use. If you're just a common user who will never use it as anything other than x86 (or whatever you might be using it as), it's not even meant for you - and for this product it was not the right choice. Maybe they had the kind of plans you wrote about, and maybe it would have been good for that case (because of low power consumption), but as those plans failed to materialize the failure should not be blamed on Transmeta.
I'd love to know how well it performs at running Java VM bytecode in comparison to running Java VM on regular x86 on top of host desktop OS at same clockspeed... I have no idea, but there I can at least see potential, because Java VM is forced to do software interpretation - although it has had JIT compilation for a long time, but fast-JIT can't do much optimization; but it's still machine code, so...?
Sony used Crusoe on a few other ultraportables at the time, so I suspect it really was just for the power consumption and no further higher purpose. Which as robsku1 says is a totally bizarre choice and not appropriate at all.
A PDA built on Java code (kinda like Android I guess) running with one of these in native mode would’ve been much more appropriate - so it’s strange Sony never tried that despite also having a PDA line.
This is one of the most compromised devices I have ever seen. It's mind bogglingly impressive - I bet the engineers who worked on this have some crazy stories. They probably had a list of design requirements and somehow got this device to barely meet them.
If I worked on this thing I'd totally flex on my engineer friends about the shit I pulled off and then probably irrationally defend its flaws when they brought up how bad this thing really is.
This video inadvertently answered the question of why the cell phone you get to change party members in Final Fantasy 7 is called a PHS, so thanks for that! Neat little device in spite of its shortcomings. It's wild to think live video streaming was possible, if only barely, in 2000. Loved the sequence at the end.
Yup! They were based off the personal handy phones of the times. :) much cooler than the android/iPhone knockoffs we get in 15 and later haha. :P
PHS had very good audio (32kbps) which is much better than the 2G 3G cell phone. The service has shut down but I still attach them to the POTS phone line and use them as a cordless handset.
Both RealMedia and Windows Media ASF software existed since around 1997, so yes, it was totally possible. It was not easy however, as you needed hardware for this: in minimum version a video camera plus a computer with a video capture card, which was not too common at these times. And of course a good Internet connection and an own server, as public video streaming services did not exist.
Bro, how do you have under 100k subs??? Your long-form content is awesome! Your enthusiasm in your videos is on par with guys like LGR and Technology Connections, and I'd say your content is on par too! And then you drop this video! This laptop is weirder than anything I've seen in my time watching vintage tech channels. A camcorder using a technically complete x86 Windows ME "laptop" as a backbone for a camcorder is so perfectly 90s/00s Sony that it couldn't be made by anyone else, like you said. Great video!
It just takes time, I'm getting there! Thanks so much!
@@CathodeRayDude In a time i hope you will catch up there is also many other great content creators with under 100k subs unfortunatley. Love your content !
When I stumbled across this channel, the number was way lower. I remember my surprise, when I watched the video, thought "how could I have missed this for so long", scrolled down to the subscriber count and thought "wait..WHAT?". Unfortunately, I can't increase the number my more than 1, but that is what I did quite some time ago.
This channel is certainly among those on UA-cam where an enthusiast with no or next to no supporting team (he obviously had someone film him filming in the last segment, but I there's no big and/or established production company behind the channel) creates content which is far better than the crap that TV stations try to shove into our faces. One of the reasons why I don't even have a TV service subscription and watch UA-cam instead.
@@SPINNINGMYWHEELS777 hard agree, he puts more effort into his videos than some channels with 10x the subscribers.
Exactly what I had in mind indeed. I had LGR and Tech Connections guys in mind while watching this vid that got in my UA-cam recommendations. Great and very interesting vid ! Thanks.
Sony had already made the best automated video editing algorithm 22 years ago... I guess it's time for us editors to pack it in
it's gibbs
Honestly? I think that "shake up" mix of gibbs was one of the best cat videos I've ever seen.
(Also, I laughed my butt off over the visual explanation of the mixer logo)
A friend of mine asked me recently "What CRT should I get? I want one that is aesthetically pleasing."
I broke it down into 3 categories:
A: One that has buttons on the front and looks ugly
B: One that hides it's buttons or doesn't have them and looks aesthetically pleasing.
C: SONY
I have no idea what it is about SONY of the 80's and 90's but their design is pure beauty. So many of their products haven't just aged well; they just haven't aged.
I know some people will agree, but personally; if I see a piece of retrotech and it has SONY on it, I trust that it will be something special.
I see people say "Why hasn't MiniDisc had it's resurgence?" and personally I believe, that MD hasn't come back into vogue because it doesn't seem retro yet. It still feels like it's from the future. Same as with the PS2. It doesn't feel like a retro console. Visually it still looks modern (especially the slim, holy shit).
Recently I've been trying to get a SONY KV-9PT50
Anyway, rant over. Can I just say that the intro to this video is fantastic. You really set the mood, it feels both calming yet eerie. I've noticed you have been experimenting so much recently with your format and I love it.
Oh! Also, it's strange that you mentioned FMV tapes on the last episode and just last week, the tapes for the game Phantasmagoria 2 were found and being digitised at this very moment.
Rest In Peace Gibbs. Forever a Large Man
Wow that is a loud fan
hey tay
Thats loud HDD, isnt it?
You're one to talk about loud noises on stream. LOL
I love that it's a fact that me and Tay FREAKING Zonday watch the same UA-cam channels! lol
the real irony about transmeta cpus is that modern intel cpus are implemented in much the same way using microcode to implement x86 on top of a meta architecture.
That's not quite true. Already Pentium Pro which predates Transmeta is microcoded - but the uOps are RISC style, just like they are on the CPUs of today, and microcode amounts to translation tables rather than actual executable code.
Transmeta Crusoe is VLIW, like Itanium, and has a hypervisor software written in VLIW executed on the processor that generates VLIW from x86 code and manages a translation cache several megabytes in size. It's fundamentally more similar to how Rosetta or QEMU works or numerous game system emulators, from Playstation to newest ones; except it also has to explicitly schedule the execution of individual operations across processor's execution units, because as opposed to any modern processor, the native instruction set encodes it explicitly, and the CPU is missing an instruction scheduler entirely.
Kinda true, kinda not. Since Core 2, they do macro-op fusion which is similar but not really.
Its then next gen Intel cpu that is supose to have code morthing. But only for x86 instructions, the x64 will still be hardware... well a mix of hardware and microcode
@@SianaGearz technically Itanium is not VLIW, but EPIC. Explicitly parallel instruction computing is similar to very long word instruction computing, but EPIC has some differences that I admit to not understanding.
@@SianaGearz Itanium is still bad, though.
That's so cool! I've watched while it was a patreon release, and yes, it seems to be a really fascinating device - me and my gf managed to snatch TWO of them recently, and both are on the way to us. As I've managed to find, there are two versions of this thing: GT1 and GT3, they differ only in HDD volume and OS install; first one is 20 GB with ME, second one is 30 GB with supposedly Windows 2000 or XP. So if the number of 5000 units refers only to GT1, then probably there are more units in total.
I've had a Hitachi Flora 220TX with a Crusoe 533 as a main machine for a bit in 2005-2007, and it was barely manageable at that point - so I pretty much understand the pain here.
Also, as I suspect, the battery uses three 18650 units - it looks just right to fit them, and the voltage of 11.1V seems to suggest three 3.7V elements. I will attempt to re-cell mine if the battery is dead.
Two of them
@@DzSwipe the memes become self sustaining
Please image the XP hdd!
@@TAGMedia7 unfortunately mine is GT1 too. XP one is an elusive thingy.
Three 18650, where? That's a netbook battery, much too big. For something like this, i expect three 18400 cells, and i have seen tiniest of subnotebooks use this arrangement before.
I almost bought that exact Sony laptop, used via eBay, in 2002. I ended up choosing a Sony Vaio Picturebook instead, which in contrast to this was "computer first, camera second." I also had - and still have - the Sony Clie UX-50, which was smaller than the one in the video (my friends used to think it was a Nintendo DS until I opened it and they saw the full illuminated keyboard.) It had the same signature features though, the flip-camera and the double-hinged display - although set up for use in landscape mode instead of portrait. I was definitely part of that group that enjoyed those unique fiddly gadgets that nobody else had!
The early naughts were wild. Sony did some magazine ads for VAIO notebooks here in Germany that were perfumed to smell like some kind of bathroom. I don't exactly remember how it was done, but I think there was a small envelope you had to rip open and put up to your nose.
Same here in sweden. But I remeber them being way chaper, more in the €2800 rangre, its possibly this was the next year after. They also had sort of a simular computer but slimmed down that cost about €1400 that at this time was really very competative
I was wrong, it was was a small patch on the magazine ad you had to rub to release some kind of herbal scent.
Those VAIO machines were crazy desirable, but way out of reach for a student like myself.
The Crusoe sticker is the first thing I've noticed. I have a Compaq TC1000 with the same CPU (rescued from the trash in around 2010). A Crusoe makes absolutely no sense for this Sony machine but it did for a tablet PC for writing etc. where battery life would have been much more important than performance. This happened because it was the first processor to add backwards compatibility to a VLIW design. It was actually not that bad for some kinds of code (like Quake III, probably) but it was trash for realistic scenarios with lots of branching. The video codecs probably performed poorly not because of the VLIW design but because of the lack of a L2 cache. It only had L1 cache (64+32 kb to be precise). A comparable PIII of the era only had 16+16 kb L1 cache but 512 kb L2 cache.
The TC1100 went to pentium M / celeron and made world difference. I have a thin client I keep around just because of the transmetta processor. There were a couple of driver updates for the processors (which runs before any OS boots) but the improvements were insignificant.
I've only used it with linux, and it was extremely slow booting and opening apps, because the IDE port was broken and I had a USB pendrive as hard disk, hidden with a USB extension cord I made so there was nothing sticking out.
Nvidia tried a VLIW design with code translation, but for ARMv8, a few years back with Denver. Apparently some former Transmeta people were in that project.
I have a circa 2001-2 Fujitsu PC with a transmeta processor. It also had a weird proprietary memory module. 128k was soldered on, and there is one memory slot. It came with another 128k, for 256k total, but I was able to find a 256k module, so now it has 384k, which is the maximum. It came with Windows XP. Has a built-in DVD drive and was just fast enough to play movies. It was the smallest, lightest PC with a built in optical drive that I could find at the time I bought it.
@@gregneumarke9373 MB not KB for the memory of course.
What type of memory was it, do you remember?
Sony apparently had an external webcam with optical zoom during this era: the EVI-D100.
This is the sort of device I could imagine someone on Beyond 2000 attaching to their arm and proclaiming that in a decade, everyone will have one.
Hello smiling Daria.
There's not enough love for the end video, which is so shockingly beautiful for being shot on what it was. You do good work sir!
Thank you so much, I'm hoping this is the start of a routine for me.
Oh I dunno. Sony made those LinkBuds this year. They're pretty unique. And they've got those oddball QD-OLED Bravia TVs inbound later this year.
Oh and their phones. You don't see many ultrawide 4K 120hz notchless screens on the market these days. The Xperia 1 iii became a meme last year because of how well it was received for being different, yet conventional. It was comforting.
I just had to look up what QD-OLED is and that’s pretty impressive!
Speaking of Xperias, the Xperia Pro has a micro HDMI port so you can use it as an external monitor for Sony's a-series cameras. Which sounds great but it has a 21:9 screen and is over $2,000.
@@dukeofthebump ua-cam.com/video/80YFtnTBApU/v-deo.html
@@dukeofthebump It honestly feels like weird phones last hurray was the LG Flip. I would have loved to see what else LG had planned or thought of come to market but they're gone now.
The phones are not really 4K though. More like 1600p.
I think the intention with the Crusoe was originally to run something native on it rather than running Windows on top of it. The Crusoe is a VLIW chip, which had benefits for certain tasks, like image processing. In fact, Nikon uses a different VLIW chip, their own Expeed processors, in their dSLRs. So, there is some amount of precedent for using VLIW chips for this sort of thing. I think trying to get it working with different websites, and perhaps more tellingly to get it to work with 3rd party PCMCIA cellular modems and such, that they found they couldn't really do this all with a bespoke OS with the kind of compatibility they needed. I also wonder how much of this was planned in advance with the promises of Crusoe's benefits with imaging tasks which was later not realized, at least not while running an x86 OS, and by the time it was actually there, there was too much work already put into to try to design it for a different processor.
Trovalds (the father of Linux) worked for Transmeta at one point and he concluded a Crusoe-native OS was improbable.
Loved the sequence at the end, I don't usually watch these sorts of demo reels of old video equipment, since I have no eye for video quality, but interspersed with the "behind the camera" clips, it was very enjoyable to watch.
At the start of the video, I imagined a device like this might have had a use in industries where people needed to go off site and document things with video or photographs. You could capture your media, take it back to the hotel, index the files, and maybe upload it somewhere. But as you started going over the software, it became evident that was not the intended purpose.
I lost it at the _MovieShaker_ software reference, hilarious!! Great video as always!
I know telecommunication technology in Japan was way, way ahead of everywhere else. You should look up how insane flip phones got. Literally almost smart phone levels of internet access before smart phones were a thing. I wouldn't be surprised if Japan had the internet capabilities to allow people to live stream in the year 2000.
This is what i was wondering.
Maybe we'd need more "2000's Japan" context to understand this thing better
my ex gf had one from korea that had a built in TV tuner
@@drrezash9287 Samsung smart phones in Korea are still sold to this day with TV tuners in them. I don't think their flagship models have it, it might be getting phased out within the next few product cycles.
I noticed something about the little Side wheel.
in early day laptops, when you reinstalled them from scratch the driver software for the mouse pad wouldn't automatically take. so you kind of got good at navigating using tab, shift+tab and the enter key. either that or enable numbpad mouse mode if the laptop had a numpad at all which they often didn't.
it seems to me that the side wheel is just bound to tab, shift+tab and enter for full screen programs. if you have the chance, see if you can do the same sort of navigation in URecSight using those key combo's I've mentioned. I'm curious as to the results.
I have a Vaio with that same kind of scroll wheel but it's one of the larger Vaios. :P
I'm probably going to fix a few things on it and then sell it, I have too many computers. :c
I'm an old fella who worked in the Hi-Fi and AV industry for many years. I also love photography and technology. and am an electronic engineer I also own and have owned a lot of Sony equipment...
This one completely passed me by!
I love it.
Thank you for such a wonderful and detailed review. Brilliant.
I remember the Sony Store in downtown Toronto very well, basically a very expensive way for Sony to advertise while burning money on some of the highest commercial rents in Canada. You could get some really esoteric parts of the Sony catalog (like Betamax blanks) there though.
I never actually bought anything there, and I don't think anyone else did either. I do have some Sony catalogs and flyers from the era and they're a trip to read now. The infamous Onion video is probably the best parody ever of that era of Sony.
I kept asking a Sony Store in the UK if they were going to bring the Mylo to Europe, and most of them didn’t even know what it was :)
It was a neat way to ogle the Bravia TVs and PS3s and other Blu-ray players though.
Honestly it'd be kinda neat to see scans of those magazines, kinda miss the wild west of gadgets that was the early 2000's prior to smartphones
I remember about a year ago I left a comment asking for MORE GIBBS when you said you'd be moving your studio, to which you replied the configuration of the new studio would make it difficult. Well Mr Ray Dude aka large man, there he is, you've made me really happy with this today. More Gibbs is always a pleasure. As was this whole video, another great breakdown and review of a cool niche product I never heard of before. Keep up the great work dude!
This dude is one of my favorite UA-camrs. Great show with really good writing. People don't realize how important it is.
there he is
its gibbs
large man
17:00 An observation: the 640x480@15 resolution appears to be interlaced and the 320x240@30 resolution is progressive. Sony did this on a bunch of cameras back in the day - I had a pro camera at my first job where if you enabled progressive scan, you'd get 15i instead of 30p but it would be tagged as if it were progressive. So you'd of course go with 30i. For the footage I shot in 15i by mistake, I ended up writing an AVISynth script to motion-adaptive deinterlace and blend frames. It was unpleasant.
44:00 Also: PHS in Final Fantasy VII is named after the very same PHS system that existed in real life.
That's a great point, I hadn't paid attention to that - means they were bandwidth limited, most likely.
Knowing you probably don't care to fiddle with shit like this, DM me on Twitter and I can try to shove one of these 15i files through AVISynth and see if they're at all recoverable. But yeah, I think that the CPU cannot shovel the data from the (probably DV/1394) camera through the PCI bus to disk in 30i/30p, so it does 15i and throws away every other frame.
Also, the preview might actually be 60 fields/frames, (maybe 30i) per second as well. When you go frame by frame every frame looks different, though it may also be because of the poor response time of the screen. Also, there seems to be a setting for it below white balance - it has options like "field", "frames(interpolation)".
You are seriously such a professional content maker.
It's all produced super well, you do good research, and you're awesome at doing your lines in front of a camera.
Also this was a particularly neat video ^__^
You explaining these things is always the best thing on UA-cam. And thank you for the long format of the videos. I hate that I usually cannot finish my meal, dessert, and come down from a work day to those other "20 minute" UA-cam formats. You def. help me learn and relax and chill out at the end of a day!
On the subject of tiny laptops of the era, how about the Toshiba Libretto, which came out in 1996? I can't find size specs for this device, but the Libretto was also quite smol, with a 6.1" screen on most models and a similarly dinky keyboard. I used it for years in college as a great in-class note-taking device decades before that became normal. I even wrote code on it for my CS classes and it was even fast enough for the primitive graphics coding class. It also had a ton of strange choices, like two PCMCIA slots (for the doublewide cards, mostly) and the weirdest trackpoint positioning on the side of the screen cover (with mouse buttons on the back!)
Oh, and I thought that Crusoe sticker looked familiar! Both Toshiba and Fujitsu used it for their subnotebooks of the era. (I also used a Toshiba Lifebook P-1032 for a while, before the eeePC came along.) It was slow, sure, but it really did have decent battery life. I could get four hours (a D&D gaming session) out of the Lifebook, which was pretty rare at the time, though admittedly I wasn't using it for anything intense in those sessions.
Sony stopped short of finishing. This is so typical of Sony at the time. It's like they have a dozen R&D centres and at no point do any of them talk or work together. They likely all competed for $$$ so that would explain why two very similar products would have far different weird as heck UIs, failings or obvious missing pieces. It was exceedingly rare that a new family of products came out fully baked.
Still a Sony fanboi though.
I admire Sony for what they try to do, even if they fail or get forgotten.
Just found a Sony Mavica FD75 floppy disk camera for 2$ at a thrift store, just ordered the batteries, a fresh package of floppies, and a USB floppy drive just for the silly expiriance of using such an odd device, even with my more modern EOS Rebel T6 hanging right next to it, after all, life isn't about why, it's about why not, why not have some fun with old gear just for giggles and a new experience
Saw the Crusoe reveal coming, I had the bad fortune of using a Compaq tablet that contained one. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) it died in short order after the universal DC adapter I was using decided to send it max voltage.
Ahh yes the Transmeta Crusoe, or where Linus Torvalds famously (maybe famously in my world) was employed and where Transmeta got a lot of notoriety based on his involvement. I think this is the first actual device I've seen demonstrated that utilized the processor, so that's pretty cool! It does make me wonder what other consumer gadgets / electronics also had them shoehorned in and made it to the general public.
Kudos for the well thought out video and excellent pacing, I enjoyed it all the way through. Your quick hitters that break up the content add to the over all production, never do I feel like I am being instructed on the product but I am actually sharing your enjoyment in the actual thing you're showing. Keep it up!
I think they must have had some cancelled orders or something because you can get Crusoes for very cheap on ebay in the original BGA packaging, still ready to be put in a crappy laptop and ruin somebody's day. There's one sat on my desk as I'm typing this.
The beeps of the camera buttons are instantly recognizable by anyone owning a Sony camera.
Even as a NEX3 owner it does lmao
I have to wonder what this could have been with another CPU.
I've been *trying* all morning to make a watchable video that could stream at dialup bitrates and it's HARD. 56Kbps is not much, and the 36Kbps that most dialup connections would have had is even less.
Thank you again for sharing this, it was a really great experience.
With another CPU, it would have likely featured a grand ton of 35 minutes of battery time. So there's that.
The transmeta was way faster than anything Intel could put in the smal and lights at that time.
The main problem is probobly windows me on a 2.5" spaning disk.
Transmeta got s really unfair review.
.The reason was that Intel around this time stealth bought all the synthetic testning suites and they change them so they would keep flushing the code, making the transmeta comically slow.
Compare that to say a mobile P3 running say a game frame rate it would pretty much the result. This while transmeta used a quarter the power.
Its nothing magical about it. Its something like a normal arm cpu (well the fastest avalible at this time.
Half of the powersaving have nothing to do with the architecture. Its stuff like having a very large cache, no north bridge, only single channel ram. Code morthing was only there to bypass patentes.
The most ironic part is that Intel ended buying the holding company and will use codemorthing in there next gen cpu (but only for about half of the instructions.
Outside of us (western europe, Japan, korea thaiwan) both idsn, adsl and cable-modem was fairly common around this time. It was not like evey flat had LAN or cable-modem, but if you wanted one you could get on.
When I moved out of my student (early 2001) flat to a normal flat (that really was pretty much the cheapest i could find) isdn, adsl and cable-modem was all avalible. So that was 128k, 512k or 1M. The a bit nicer flats alreddy generally had lan by this point.
In some cities even in the suburban areas cable-modem was avalible as early as 1995.
Dialup was about 8 kilobytes per second which is about 64 kilobits per second. I remember not really getting that much though, around 2-4 was more realistic. When I got broadband I immediately got 60 kilobytes per second (around half a megabit). It's ridiculous now considering that speeds of 1 gigabit are being offered to consumers here in the UK.
@@georgeyreynolds 57kb was tha fastest modem. But that was included protokoll and overhead. Isdn was 64 or 128 whith no overhead, so it run at a solid 8-16kB always.
Sony wanted to be a lifestyle so much back then. They even had a Sony Style store at the posh International Plaza Mall here in Tampa (anchored by stores such as Neiman Marcus, Tiffany's, Louis Vuitton etc.) which was a whole mood. It was a really cool store when the mall opened in 2001 and had a very distinctive vibe. I can totally see this kind of thing being in that setting. (edit: of course I don't mean this exact item since I know you said it was Japan only release, but I just mean this weird, niche, kind of product they were making at the time.)
a button to play the windows ding noise is exactly what my phone is missing 😂
I come back to your vids and re-watch them sometimes when I feel drained. This is one of my favorites. We miss Gibbs
Sony of that era was made for extreme geeks. Just like me, i only lacked the required deep pockets. that might be the explanation why this niche was so small and led to their decline.
you are right when I was in the scouts this one kid had some sony handheld computer thingy it wasnt the psp it was some fancy gadget with apps and he'd get made fun of it because it was nerdy or whatever.
Well not really. Sony had both expensive and decent price stuff. Granted no cheap stuff.
A lot of People think of minidisc as some odity today, but there was a 10 year period between caset and mp3 when MD ruled.
Also the PlayStation range was defently adordable. The ps2 was the fastest segling cosole so far taking the size of the market into acount.
And during this time, if you wanted a top shelf laptop, it was either a Sony or a IBM. When IBM dropped out it was really just Sony. Apple really didnt become toå tear before something like 2001 or 2002
Yea they had all this cool stuff but i had no money now i have more money but the cool stuff is gone.
That's my memory of them as well. E.g. As best I recall the Slashdot guys all had them at The Bazaar conference in NYC at the end of 1999 (a friend got me an exhibitor pass so I got to hang out before the exhibition opened.)
In Japan dialup was actually much less common, and as ya know there was better dialup types but broadband actually was adopted there much sooner. The camera on this is fantastic, it looks so much better than any webcam I have used prior to like 2012ish. Even then most webcams are still just the same crappy sensor. If you had a web show this was the way to go way back when!
Thank you for putting the MTV/VH1 song credits bug in the lower left on the Gibbs video. It gave me a very good sense memory
too bad I can't be there during the live streaming ... I will watch the video tonight! cheers from Italy
Beautiful. I love it. Man, when you can make someone like me, who has always liked gadgets, but really knows very very little about electronics in general, watch nearly every video you make. Then I'd say you have a true gift. I enjoy the way you make me want to learn about the topics you present, and the comedic touch, as well as the artistic, and vintage style all together into a comprehensive, and easy to understand narrative. I wish I was in a better position to support you monetarily, but know that you have my support in view and likes!
I found this channel around Thanksgiving week, 2020, through UA-cam recommending a video about the NES's RF output and old school analog TV signals... You only had about 7.5k subs then, but I was digging the nerdy, deep dive into consumer technology. I liked and subscribed immediately after the video ended, and I'm glad I did - this channel was going somewhere. This kind of content is great, keep up the excellent work! 👍
That might have been the first one i saw too
I am SO happy you made image of the drive for the archive. Thank you for your service!
2000? What magic is this? I'd have been thrilled with this marvel 10 years later..!
Competition from alternate CPU arches, ala Apple M1, has actually gotten fierce lately, and POWER9 even is competitive in the HEDT scene and Altra ARM silicon recently entered that market too.
I think I've heard that small-batch chip foundries are becoming cheaper / more common, and I suspect this has the potential to turn things on its head eventually. The mainstream companies may or may not be replaced, but it could become not-uncommon to see devices with custom processors
great piece you picked there from Sony and IMO one of the best explanation what the 'old' Sony really was about...
one thing you forgot, they had lot of buttons, switches and latches but each of them was cleverly thought on shape and size and even labelled either by print or embossed, compare this to todays junk there you have typical a try&error style of identical looking and non labelled buttons let you guessing the function each time you use it
Excellent video, really interesting to hear about. I really liked the section at the end where you use the camera. It really shows how we take for granted today that most tech in this genre is so much easier to use than tech from 20 years ago. Superb to watch.
This somehow reminds me of some early IP surveillance cameras. But those usually had a PowerPC chip and would run a Java application as their firmware. You can easily tell one apart because the form factor was about the size of two beta tapes stacked on each other. There used to be a variety with a composite input and a serial connection for a PTZ mechanism.
As always, your videos are top notch, and the content is just amazing! I've always had a love for old tech, but I never knew how much more odd tech was out there for which I was totally unaware. Thanks for all your great work bringing these videos to us. Your channel is vastly underrated, my friend!
The Crusoe is just one of those compromises they probably got stuck with because of the size and the need for a lower TDP, even if the P3 ULV was available the TDP of the P3 ULV was probably still a little too much for this cramped machine, maybe if they ran it throttled it would've been at the same power level but then again it'd probably would've been just as slow, little machines like this always have compromises, I've always loved the Toshiba Librettos, the 50CT and 70CT are like the most perfect little DOS machines, but the one thing I really hate about them is the HDD controller is on the ISA bus and no Cardbus only 16bit PCMCIA, I can deal with the latter, but the limited RAM and the slow HDD are kind of a drag when combined, but I'm guessing with the density of the motherboard layout with the technology they had access to at the time it was designed they could only put one peripheral in the device on a full 32bit bus and they decided that the video controller was the best thing, which I guess I'd rather have a VLB video controller and an ISA HDD controller rather than vice versa. Most of these little full featured machines just always tried to punch a little bit above their weight for the time.
I had a Pentium 3 ULV computer about this size, with a magnesium chassis providing a ton of cooling. The keyboard got very hot, and on one occasion, it has melted its rubber (well likely TPU/TPE) feet off.
I think the Crusoe while it starts software very sluggishly, should actually be a top notch choice for video processing and encoding, measured on its power consumption, code which would be invoked regularly enough to not fall out of the markup/VLIW cache and can be written to be effectively branch free but computationally is fundamentally quite heavy. Whether they actually had the time to optimise things to conclusion, is another matter.
@@SianaGearz the pentium 3 ULV had a northbridge that pretty much totaly broke the efficency. It was all the way forward to sandy processors Intel skipped the north bridge
@@matsv201 that one had a SiS single chip mainboard - north south and iGPU all in one package. It had to for footprint reasons.
@@SianaGearz wasnt it just a multi chip, with the same die as the other?
@@matsv201 as the other what? Whether it's a large monolithic die or an MCM I have no idea. I don't know whether MCM were around by that time anyway. Looks like one normal if pretty large fcbga.
SiS made modular chipsets with all that same logic as well though. Self developed for all we know.
Stay-til-the-end crew checking in. Delighted by the demonstration footage. Top tier ASMR, thank you 👏
I was in japan in the early 2000s and they did have video calling on docomo/vodophone cellphones, and most phones had some kind of camera. I can imagine this would have been more useful there with their better internet (for the time).
Awesome video! Just a quick tip: you should add the device name in the title, or at least description, so that future people can easily find this video. The archive link does contain "PCG-GT1" but is not that search-friendly.
That is, if you didn't intentionally omit it :D
CRD: "Had this taken off here all of that would have meant"
Me: "pron!"
CRD: "Churches"
ahhhhhhh
28:58 I came back to rewatch this video and this clip caught me off guard. Clever, silly and a well shot bit, love it!
I really dig how far your scripting & presentation skills have come; this is the best one yet! I couldn't believe what the time-stamp said; you had me fully engaged all the way! You're really getting professional man, but without losing any of the passion. You're a real gem, CRD...very well done!
oh wow, ive seen your stuff pop up a few times and have watched a few of your videos around this length.
somehow didnt notice you have around around 100k subs.
the quality of these videos in script, sound and video made me feel that you had more, legit didnt notice.
Ive subbed, even though i might not watch all of your videos, i have found quite a few interesting ones.
the 7 windows users on 1 pc was the first i actually watched and i found that one very cool.
The Gibbs tribute hits different now, RIP
One of the very best videos on old technology I've seen in a very long time.
I wish I could double like this. The best I can do is just share it with my friends, and 12-year-old son who I think would be fascinated by something he's never likely to see anywhere else.
Well done in every facet of the narrative.
Thank you so much for uploading the software ♥️
I'm gonna use the hell out of video shaker
Oh man! I got so excited to click play! Unfortunately my Patreon is on hold because my S/O had her car totaled so we shifted some finances but I’ll be back to watch this. Also, your thumbnail skills have totally grown. May the AI overlords bless this video in the algorithm👍
I"m so sorry to hear that, I hope your situation gets better. And thank you on the thumbnails - I think I've finally figured out what visual style I want, hopefully it'll help me design better looking, more consistent stuff. See you tomorrow!
2:40 The Clié UX50 is still one of my favourite devices, despite being PalmOS crap like you said. These early 2000's Sony products feel like spectres from some lost future; Hauntological devices.
Man, this is gold! Please do more videos with hardware outside the studio, this was artistic and emotional
WOAH.. I did not expect that ending. I missed that the other 4 times I’ve watched this video all the way through.. now that’s some emotional A/V footage.
Reminds me of some dreamy Tangerine Dream stuff..
Hopefully your channel will someday have the large following it deserves. Then you can get the really niche comments like Japanese people saying they used this to stream back in the day and can fill in some of the gaps.
Let's see if I'll even be able to watch this during the premiere.
Thanks for making this video, I never knew such a weird machine existed! I just wanted something long and a bit technical to watch in the background while I worked on my latest circuit board design, but I ended up watching the whole thing because it was so crazy and fascinating at the same time!
This is a great video I love the deep dive into something so seemingly insignificant. Awesome work.
this is a 71 minute powerhouse of a documentary
This is the era, the atmosphere, the ethos that I would like to bring back. Machines and gadgets as proofs of concepts. Daring to dream. Dreaming to dare. This could have been a great machine...
... had the internet and OS of the day matched the same functionality as this.
I'm not defending the product. I'm defending the concept, the idea, the aspiration.
Oh, to be eight in 2000 again.
First of all I would like to say, thank you so much! I have had a vested interest in this device for so long, but there was so little information about it online about it. Not even local Japanese content creator made videos of it; much less an hour long video delving into the history and usage of the device! This is an amazing video and I enjoyed watching through every second of it!
Secondly, at 1:00:37 you mention about not knowing whether or not Sony allowed others to stream on PercasTV, but in fact they did! Other VAIOs could stream to it using URecSight, for example the PCG-C1 could also stream to PercasTV after a RecSight update provided free-of-charge on Sony's website.
Additionally, even VAIOs that didn't have internal cameras could stream to the service. You can use official Sony webcam like PCGA-VC2, or you can even stream the input from a camera using i.LINK port!
Finally, NON-VAIO computers were allowed to stream on it a couple months after the service launched! However, must use a specific software called PercasProducer, and it was extremely limited. You could not use i.LINK functionality, for example. Only USB webcam, and the resolution options were limited.
I'm not sure if third party computer support was a desperation, but it seems likely. At a similar time they announced PercasProducer, they also announced new heavily lowered prices for PercasTV. The 10 minutes (for 5 viewer) plan went down to a measly 300 yen. If you went over 5 viewers (up to 10 viewers), it was still only 200 yen more at 500 yen. I think the pricing shows that they hesitantly added third party computer support to try and attract more users, as the service proved unpopular.
Very interesting device and your in depth research and tests are so delightful! For me it marks kind of a missing link: I was well aware of the small Sony Subnotebooks back then, that were evolving along maximum tech possibilities. Sony had the famous C1 Subnotebook series starting as early as 1998 (!) in Japan with the PCG-C1 - sporting a Mobile Pentium MMX 233MHz CPU with a screen and resolution close to the device shown here. This series was famous for portability with its swiveling webcam built into the screen border, in the third generation PCG-C1VN they introduced the 600 Mhz Transmeta CPU in September 2000. - so I'd say the PCG-GT1 was the logical next step of combining their camcorder tech quality with the excellent portability of their small, decent selling laptops - raising the portable streaming in Japan to a semi professional level. I remember circling around the 4 th generation C1 Laptop in a shop, ready to buy, but decided to leave it, because of the odd 1280x480 screen resolution and the pathetic Transmeta CPU. But soon after that I got the brand new PCG-TR1 which marked the begin of the famous TR series with the first 900 Mhz Intel Centrino in September 2003 - and I was blown away by the speed and the 3-D capabilities. At a whopping 2500 $ it was far from being a bargain and the specs on paper weren't too good. But that little machine was screaming fast, even compared to other Laptops of the time and the design and screen were from another planet. I had always wondered, why there was a full fledged cutting program included on it (Premiere pro), and a decent quality swiveling Webcam. Now I have an Idea why: To be a somewhat reasonable successor to the slow PCG-GT3.
Also, this would have definitely been something I would have been drooling over if I had seen in a magazine or advertisement.
As a kid, laptops were incredibly fascinating to me. I would read every advertisement I could find about them, compare models, be amazed when the finally fell below 1000€ in price, but I especially loved particularly big or small laptops, or laptops with crazy features, so I can only imagine my reaction if I had known about something like this.
Only when for the first time in my life I got to sit in front of the laptop of my uncle, did the realization that laptops were exactly the same as computers, and not some magical devices, hit me, which greatly put a damper on my enthusiasm for them, but I think overall it must have been like 3 or 4 years total where laptops were about half I would think about, I even made detailed ones from paper, with an accurate keyboard layout and accessories.
Not sure how my parents managed to somehow ignore the pretty obvious signs that I was autistic back then.
Leave it to Sony. Some of the stuff they come up with/have come up with, I suspect they have transcended the profit motive. They do things just because they like the idea of the thing they are doing existing.
I saw this thing in an ad back in 2000 and was very intrigued by it. For some reason it has kept popping into my mind from time to time since then. For a few years I even ran a small server on a transmeta HP thin client that I got only because I wanted to have something related to this laptop. So when I saw you were doing a video on it, I was so happy! Thanks for this long awaited exorcism!
you continue to knock it out of the park with your videos!! always highlighting tech i love and tech i would've loved had i been there
you and Anthony at LTT should make a show together. both have this amazing voice quality that just makes people happy.
The major trouble with Sony "flexing" is that they ALWAYS err on the side of proprietary as all hell. They shot themselves in the foot more often than not with crippling proprietary BS.
Yeah. Then there's the things they could have done but didn't, they could have made a MD Data2 based mp3 player in 2000, 650MB of removable storage that would have been around half the size of the iPod.
@@MultiMidden Their tech at many points could have proved 100% disruptive to the tech industry and changed the course of tech dramatically... but they ALWAYS lock it down to an extent that they cripple it's utility and their great ideas fail... hard because they cripple all utility other than the narrow minded BS that Sony tries to push.
One of the main reasons why the PSVita failed was the overpriced, shitty memory cards. Should of used SD cards like Nintendo and other companies did at the time.
Just wanted to say that your content is absolutely wonderful.
I loooooove obscure tech (new and old) and you do an amazing job covering even weirder things than I've seen LGR cover - something I never thought possible!
Keep up the excellent work,
JohnnyCache
I would have flipped my lid if I saw a screen that small with 1024x768 res back in 00.
very neat device, thanks for showing it! You do great work showcasing these oddball computers and giving the history to go along with it.
I wonder if a swap to Windows 98 would help the speed of the OS and hence the cameras ability to record faster than 15fps (or if its set at a hardware level). One of the biggest problems with ME at the time was that graphics cards couldnt keep up with the OS.
All of that depends on your ability to install the software in windows 98 (shouldnt be a problem unless said software was never put to disc).
Just a random thought from someone who had Windows ME for about 3 weeks before realising it was just horrible and reverting back to Windows 98 SE.
ME was probably the worst version of Windows released.
@@0raj0 The only Windows OS I havent tried is Windows 8 (I think). And Id have to agree, Windows ME was probably the worst.
Yeah, right… why not? I think their slogan “It’s a Sony” describes the best what they were doing )) and by that I mean any crazy exciting temerity barely possible ))
Love what they were doing so much, this s#it is not possible anymore, unfortunately
I wonder if the strategy was: “what if we leave really good engineers in the room and give them unlimited budget”
As I said while we were in the premiere, this was awesome.
Your story telling style is just excellent and I, being a non native speaker, I can listen and understand you perfectly.
What a crazy machine. Would have loved to have it back then.
Another fascinating and well researched video. Thank you for making it! Also, I appreciated your Bill Nye reference at 35:51 :D
Oh god this is peak late 90's Sony. Of course this is another level but it brought back horrible memories of NetMD at the time... my expensive, really very capable MiniDisc player was ruined by Sony's awful software.
They just had no concept of UI back then, most companies didn't but Sony devices were powerful, feature packed devices and when they started needing software it really went horribly wrong.
I love the gadget though, its undeniably cool.
Why does it always seem like no one but Apple can launch a new paradigm exactly when it becomes cost-effective and easy enough to be tangible for an average consumer?
At this point it is because apple is too big for them to half ass it. It will be the minimum spec paradigm. You will want it. I'll be barely cost effective and somewhat attainable but boy will they make money. Also unrepairable.
It's a pleasure to see you assembling your precious shelf!
Awesome video. Back on form i see. Great work cr dude. Loving it... but don't ever miss another cat video or your done