The shots with me are slightly out of focus. I would have normally reshot that but my throat was killing me when recording this and I didn't have enough time to redo that and re-edit the entire video to match the new takes.
Could you add the modded ATI driver to the Archive.org page you made? It'd be invaluable for people that come across these models and want to get games running properly
Ahh man I loved this overview, great work! Vaio machines of this era are still just the coolest thing to me, and this one in particular is gorgeous in both design and completeness. That gray and lilac has aged gracefully. Coincidentally I've had two Vaio retrospectives in the works for a while now, so it's neat to see the similarities here to those machines -- and all the differences! Especially compared to the Japanese Vaio desktops of 1999, it's fascinating how they tailored their systems for each country. Like I can't imagine a US market Vaio ever got a built-in karaoke mode or MiniDisc authoring tools for instance, heh.
Thanks! The way Sony came in to the PC market, looked around, and said "I have a better idea" really made them stand out and seems so far ahead of its time now looking back! The more research I did on this system the more I realized I got pretty lucky because the grey plastic has yellowed pretty badly on some of them. So I'm glad I got to show this one that still matches the original colors. It would have been really cool to see MiniDisc here in the US like that, it's a shame it didn't take off. I'm looking forward to see your looks at the the computers you have, they made some fascinating stuff over there for sure!
@@SmellsLikeEMinoractually there .. is @LGR up there too :-) at 14:05 how many of you want that in a "Tech Tangents 2" channel .... Shelby explains the modification to the INF file he made.. :-)
I definitely agree about the look of this PC. It's odd seeing it boot Windows 98, as it looks like a newer generation of computer. In fact, it seems like it was THE computer to usher in that new era, breaking away from the beige boxes for good. A really fascinating transitional system! Also, imagine having the reworking skills to swap out those VRAM chips... 🤔
He mentioned in another comment, it'd probably make more sense to make a DVI adapter for that monitor and use a different video card. (What kind of connector is that, btw?)
@@AaronOfMpls Kinda reminds me of a VESA DFP connector, sort of the ancestor to DVI-D, but larger. Almost even looks like the D-Terminal connector that Japan uses on video equipment. Mmmh so if the Vaio croaks out... I guess the Monitor becomes a paperweight huh? A bit unfortunate.
At 10:10 I don't think that JS function gets an unending call stack. setTimeout() will put the next setBG() call on the event loop. i.e. It's not a recursive call.
Great video. I also did one on a Sony Vaio X505, the slimmest notebook in 2004. Which might also have been a prime candidate for macOS. These old Sony devices are quite beautiful in my opinion and very well build. Sad what happened to them.
I worked at Office Max in the mid / late 90's and always thought if I were to ever buy a pre-built it would be one of the Vaio's. The looks and colors were just so different from your standard case.
Late reply, but I worked for your coemption (you know who, not the depot one but the "basics" one in the UK in the second half of 2002, filling in before emigrating to the US. I still remember the Pentium 4 Vaio with the 17" widescreen LCD monitor. It was a thing of beauty and the specs were on the face of of it superb. Oh but that SiS motherboard, iy you knew your hardware in those days, this was to say the least, not the choice you would have made if building a machine at any budget. I think I favoured MSI at the time, a time when there were so many choices, but all my experience of SiS based machines through previous IT work soured me against them. They still exist, but concentrate on the SoC market apparently.
@@gbangyt-codmobile7037 I upgraded from my IBM CRT to a 23" FHD IPS Acer (the IBM was nice, but finally switching to 16:9 was such a relief) and yeah still works fine, I even overclocked it to 70Hz lol. Used it for about 6 years till fall 2019 then upgraded to a 240Hz 25" TN Alienware. Still got the Acer for backup and/or to use with my laptop, its not like I can get any decent amount of money for it so I kept it.
I just got back into CRTs, I can't believe how gob smackingly incredible they look, and they are so unbelievably responsive, no lag whatsoever, my 144Hz G-Sync LCD looks so washed out and feels so laggy compared to the Sony G520 21" CRT, the blacks are incredible and the colours are so inky, I want to play everything I've played on LCD again on the Sony CRT to experience it properly. And then there are retro games, they look so crisp and beautiful, scanlines @ 240p are just so satisfying. I can't seem to pull myself away from it when I'm using it, it's so fun to use lol.
I specifically bought two dell monitors from the 2000's. There's something about the rendering of colors and movement that can't be replicated by LCD's. I have a 144hz monitor but for some reason is just not as smooth as the ole 85hz 1280x1024. The 144 is faster but not smoother to my eyes Also my middle school was rocking CRT's until 2010 which is kinda insane. I remember my teacher's still having them but once I hit hs in 2011 it was LCD's
I absolutely love this channel. The pacing and production value makes "gettin' to the goods" something you never really notice - start-to-finish, it's always wonderful to watch. The rewatchability of these clips is incredible.. especially when you consider the usually overwhelming technical nature of such content.
Congrats on the teleprompter it is a huge upgrade! Is that a Samsung's Nexus 10 under the mirror? I still have mine in its original box, love that tablet!
I had a Sony VAIO PCV-200. Got it new in 1998. I remember the cube demo screen thing very well, but only opened it a handful of times. Seeing the purple keyboard and mouse in your video brings back all sorts of nostalgia for me. Good times.
That's a cool machine. I always loved the VAIOs from that era but was in high school so I could never afford them. I recently picked up a Vaio X505 and a Vaio UX390 - two machines I lusted over when they were new, but damn were they expensive.
The inclusion of -FireWire- i-LINK and the nature of the proprietary display connector (look up HDI-45 and ADC) just add more to the Apple comparisons. But for my money the computer I was reminded of visuals-wise was the Sharp X68000, not any Mac (although it's still far from a perfect comparison).
So Sony has another model that you should look for You will absolutely be floored if you can find one Sony made a computer that has a micro computer with a CD drive bolted below the display and what’s really odd as you don’t see a lot of these machines but if you could find one it is the wildest machine you’ll ever see because it literally looks like the PC is floating under the screen
No not like a Mac it’s literally a monitor and the computer is mounted underneath it it literally looks like a floating CD drive it doesn’t even look like a computer but these are getting really hard to find because they are literally hardware locked two windows XP
@@johnDingoFoxVelocity so it's like those mini computers where they use the vasa mount on a monitor to attach themselves? Interesting they got a full sized cd player in there.
I worked at CompUSA when this launched and it was the coolest looking computer I had ever seen. I actually convinced a few people who came in to buy an Apple to buy this instead.
9:45 I have a modern version of this for windows 10 called "WinDynamicDesktop" and it does something similar, I'm wondering if you could get those images and use them in WDD
i did that manually back in windows xp. i got into elder scrolls: oblivion, took screenshots with 1 in-game hour intervals in between them in the exact same scene (i actually skipped some similar shots and took extras for dawn and dusk), set the blending time for switching backgrounds for something really long, like a whole minute, and put them all in a cycle. i could make it match daylight, but i liked watching the transitions so i used it in a half-hour cycle for a day.
That is the best use of Active Desktop I've ever seen! I'm glad someone came up with a good use for it. It's the first feature I ever tested in my career, and it died almost immediately. :)
remember when VAIO made desktops........yeah I remember. 1:32 for anyone that wants to know the SONY PCV-90 was the first VAIO computer they made and it came out in 1996, there was a weaker model with half the RAM and a lower clocked CPU called the PCV-70. I literally remember this it is insane. I am old
Wonderful video on this Vaio PC! I had no idea that Bleem! came out for PC, until I saw you using it in this video. And it looks like it runs pretty well on this PC.
Indeed! As for Bleem itself ... LGR, Gaming Historian, and Wrestling With Gaming all have videos about Bleem: - LGR -- "LGR Oddware: Bleem! Commercial PlayStation Emulator" (17:20) -- th-cam.com/video/MFY9Kv1c4-Q/w-d-xo.html - Gaming Historian -- "From Shady to Legal: How 2 Emulators Battled Sony - Bleem & VGS" (19:40) -- th-cam.com/video/UGHul1PrXCE/w-d-xo.html - Wrestling With Gaming -- "The Story of Bleem! - The PlayStation Emulator for the Dreamcast & PC" (9:58) -- th-cam.com/video/NSJUb9KmhNU/w-d-xo.html _EDIT: added runtimes_
This strikes me as a predecessor to the all-in-one desktops with built-in TV tuner that seemed really popular when I first visited Japan in 2008-2010. That kind of multimedia PC that can double as a TV does make sense for small Japanese homes with tatami-style furniture, I guess.
Nine Inch Nails The Slip! I have that album dvd combo. Also didn't this all in one come with stylus and a touch screen? or at least another model of it?
I love those rare sony pc's, i own one of the first picturebooks :) lovely machine you have there my guy, i hope you get to enjoy this machine for as long as possible. And Steve Jobs LOVED Sony, he never ever did sue them, he had a lot of respect for the ceo of sony
I REALLY miss my Sony VAIO PCV-120 (P200MMX) I had years ago. I gave it away to a friend with the nice Trinitron monitor. This system is really great looking! I miss Sony's good stylish designs.
I love these sony quirky PCs, congrats on the find and thanks for your work on the video. I have a pcv-w20 that has a few similarities. I should have tried some 3d games on it, I don't know what I was thinking on that video. I guess it's a reason to revisit, I also want to back up it's hard drive and look at it's insides, which I haven't.
Fantastic video. I had a Vaio laptop around 2003 that I used to import my hi8 sony camcorder stuff through. Loved that thing for editing simple videos in Windows Movie Maker.
Sick quality video man. And you really impressed me with editing the driver. Pray I find a good strong Vaio (preferably matching peripherals) desktop lol
What a nice machine. The only thing that doesn't look quite right is the flexgate-like alternating dark and light stripes near the bottom of the screen. I wonder if it's feasible to fix that...
Wow! Videos like this really give you perspective on exactly what has taken place with consumer tech in the past 20 years. Active Desktop background changing based on time of day? 15+ years ahead of its time -- think f.lux on PCs or Night Mode on smartphones! The design of the PC case does remind me of Sony's hi-fi A/V equipment of the same period. Hotkeys at the top of the keyboard? My 20-yr-old keyboard doesn't have those, but it reminds me I really should program those Windows global hotkeys: Ctrl + Alt + I for Internet (Firefox), Ctrl + Alt + M for Mail (open new tab & go to Gmail?), Ctrl + Alt + S to sleep, etc.
I have a compaq presario computer backup in the day that has some similarities with this vaio. It came with the ATI rage lt pro 4mb, but has a slot in the mobo for upgrading memory. It came with a 4mb mitsubishi memory module for a total of 8mb. Maybe this computer also have this slot?
I have a complete version of this except its a japaneese l530bp I think it's almost the same. Came in the box with all the accessories but no restore cds so I'm having trouble getting the sound card to detect. I Uninstalled the aureal drivers completely and now the device shows up as a pci audio device but the drivers won't install. On the search for one of these with the cds.
Great review! I’m really impressed by the styling of this little system, definitely forward thinking for 1999. Wonder if you could dig up that MacOS installation and use it?
Never made its way outside of Apple, as far as I know. There's an early version of OSX floating around called Rhapsody which had an x86 build, that'd be the best you can do, it's missing the aqua interface though which kinda defeats the point.
@@s8wc3 I think at that would've been the Classic MacOS (OS9/8), Apple killed the licensing programme by the end of 1998 so I doubt they would've had OSX on the cards for a 3rd party like Sony.
@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 iirc apple had been building x86 versions of osx right from the beginning, so they'd be more likely to have osx ready to go for it
@@subg9165 Rhapsody/Mac Server was pretty much the staging grounds for the entire OSX development, it had the Platinum theme from 1997 until the release of the Public Beta at the tail end of 2000 - which at that point had a very barebones Aqua desktop.
@@subg9165 when I heard mention of the version for a Vaio laptop, it got me wondering if _that_ was why they had the secret x86 builds, instead of being careful for the future like he claimed in that presentation.
I love vaio computers, they were always expensive but cutting edge. Sony had external gpu in 2012, that's way before when it got popular over the years. The vaio z I had was super fast, for a 2011 laptop, it had 4 ssd running in raid 0, an i5 and a dedicated graphics card. All inside a light 13 inch carbon fiber body.
10:10 TL;DR: No, there is no "self referencing function" in the code, it is not creating "an unending call stack," the resource consumption has little to do with that tightly written script shown, and much more to do with the fact you're running a full browser (HTML engine and JS interpreter), on a 200MHz PII with at most 256MB of ram, in the background just to provide a desktop. Longer explanation: The script is using "setTimeout" which means it's not real recursion, which means each function call is leaving the call stack before another (not nested) function is being added to the call stack, therefore insuring the stack is not growing. If it were true recursion each function call would be "nested" (placed inside the instance of the calling function, creating a memory dependance relationship), and the routine would eventually crash once it hit the limit of the JS interpreter's allocated stack memory. Most modern JS implementations have a function depth limit of about 10,000 references, likely the interpreter running this script is far less than that as JS interpreters have been HUGELY improved over the last twenty years, once you have reached that limit, the code will crash. The real resource utilization of the script would boil down to how efficiently "setTimeout" is implemented (hopefully it isn't using polling, but rather the JS event loop, which I imagine it is) within the JS interpreter itself, but it really shouldn't eat much or any CPU time if implemented correctly, and memory utilization of this script should be minimal as well. So the comment about this being a resource hog because it uses a "self referencing function" is just not accurate (no self referencing functions here). ...and the bit about it "creating an unending call stack" isn't even possible with JS (at least not without crashing once the stack limit is reached, which would in fact end the recursion at that point). Honestly, the most expensive thing about this, is the overhead of having a full browser implementation (HTML engine and JS interpreter) running in the background on a computer with only a 200MHz PII and 32MB - 256MB of memory. That is not much power to work with, modern computers have device controllers packing more punch than that.
I used to work at an Intel motherboard factory & we were building Vaio motherboards, right at that time in the late 1990's. The boards had internal code names & partnumbers of course, so they weren't sometimes called Vaio outright. Now of course, I would not remember exactly which motherboards as there were a few variants of Vaio, but I would not be surprised if any of those motherboards in these machines had our fingerprints on them. That might sound icky, but remember all motherboards around the world are handled by workers, both with & without gloves.
Now I'm trying to imagine a PS4 in lilac. That would be pretty neat. We had one of the VAIO laptops for a while, but it didn't work so they got rid of it. I liked it since it was tiny and cute. Shoulda tried to keep it.
I remember that I had one of the ATI Rage cards (not sure which) and in one rally game the trees looked like they were made of cardboard. I guess because not enough vram.
I dont know know if they ever sold them here in the UK. Sure is a nice-looking machine, not just compared to the beige box running `95 I would have had at the time.
The colour scheme is reminiscent of the Sun UltraSparc systems ,which first appeared from 1995 in a grey and purple rather than the beige of the previous sparcstation systems. A interesting footnote in the evolution of the pc and the multimedia features became common on most other systems, though never executed as well as the viao or the mac systems.
I'd be tempted to solder larger capacity ram chips onto the board in place of the existing ones and upgrade it to 16MB, but that is all dependent on if the ram chips are compatible with larger ones
Im guessing this old slimtop PC was very cool those days...and way ahead if its time!...the PC itself reminds me of these optiplex SFF(small form factor) desktops
Hi, i have a question, where i can buy windows 98, xp and ms dos sticker for my computer's? I'm from Romania and i don't know where i need to go for these stuff to buy.
I have this pc its the PCV-L620 model it still has the original stickers on the front sadly it dosent have its original mouse or stand still have original box, keyboard and monitor.
Vios were always so cool, both laptops and desktops. Sadly I never came across one. I used to watch DVDs and DVD rips on my p3 450 Coppermine with 196mb ram and some mix of HDDs I managed to scavange. Getting a PC capable of DVD playback was a milestone for me. In my teenage years I had to make do with parts I found in machines people would throw out. Used a p1 200mhz for a long time but it wasnt up to the challange. If memory serves DVDs needed a p2 333mhz at the minimum without the mpeg2 card.
Hah, that PCV-90 shown at 1:30 was my first post-Amiga PC in 1997. I also had a ginormous “laptop” of theirs in the early Aughts that had a desktop P4 CPU. Heavy, hot, zero battery life, but the screen was gorgeous.
Great review! Love that 90's Sony design. Would be curious if it would be feasible getting Linux up and running on these types of old machines, saw you using some kind of Linux in your other videos with KDE as the DE. Would be a nice little addendum if any modern or contemporary versions of Linux ran out of the box.
This isn't the first time Sony entered the PC market, they made the Sony NEWS UNIX workstation line which was popular in Japan from 1987 - 1998 (albeit meant for an audience different from the VAIO series).
Did the 8-bit computers such as the MSX really compete with IBM PCs in the US? I would think those were completely different markets, even if only due to pricing.
Do you know if it can handle more RAM and a faster PIII? Imagine it using a really optimized linux distro... It would be fast enough even for some modern tasks...
Back in 1999 the very best monitors for gaming was still the trusty flat screen super fine mesh NEC CRT monitor because of its high end features that gave the very best high resolution gaming features at the time.
Your experience with the drivers is, to me, the one flaw VAIO had throughout its history in Sony's portfolio: every single model had a proprietary quirk with their drivers. I don't know if nowadays the JIP VAIO devices come with standard stuff, but back in the day, even for the newest Windows 7 Sony VAIO laptops, you had to scour through Sony's website to get the appropriate driver because, even if the part matched, you couldn't get a standard driver to install.
As soon as I saw that background I had flashbacks. A friend of mine had one of these, and we HATED it for gaming, that 8mb of vram meant his brand new system couldn't do much more than mine, which had an older ATI Rage Pro AIW with 8mb as well. Plus for gaming at the time, the LCD was definitely a downgrade from a decent CRT, because it actually only scales images nicely some of the time. Sometimes the image would just turn to garbage when motion on screen was high. I remember spending hours tweaking and messing with settings and drivers to get the absolute most out of what it had. Though back then I did that with every computer, I was the only one in my circle of friends that would really dig in and mess with things.
The shots with me are slightly out of focus. I would have normally reshot that but my throat was killing me when recording this and I didn't have enough time to redo that and re-edit the entire video to match the new takes.
Could you add the modded ATI driver to the Archive.org page you made? It'd be invaluable for people that come across these models and want to get games running properly
I didn't even notice until you pointed it out. lol The content is great so it totally overshadow that! Keep the good work! :D
at 14:05 how many of you want that in a "Tech Tangents 2" channel .... Shelby explains the modification to the INF file he made.. :-)
When are you going to give us an update on the 1970s Data General mini computers? It's been more than a year :(
Nobody cares about video audio is king. Your audio sounds great.
Ahh man I loved this overview, great work! Vaio machines of this era are still just the coolest thing to me, and this one in particular is gorgeous in both design and completeness. That gray and lilac has aged gracefully.
Coincidentally I've had two Vaio retrospectives in the works for a while now, so it's neat to see the similarities here to those machines -- and all the differences! Especially compared to the Japanese Vaio desktops of 1999, it's fascinating how they tailored their systems for each country. Like I can't imagine a US market Vaio ever got a built-in karaoke mode or MiniDisc authoring tools for instance, heh.
Thanks! The way Sony came in to the PC market, looked around, and said "I have a better idea" really made them stand out and seems so far ahead of its time now looking back! The more research I did on this system the more I realized I got pretty lucky because the grey plastic has yellowed pretty badly on some of them. So I'm glad I got to show this one that still matches the original colors.
It would have been really cool to see MiniDisc here in the US like that, it's a shame it didn't take off. I'm looking forward to see your looks at the the computers you have, they made some fascinating stuff over there for sure!
@@TechTangents at 14:05 how many of you want that in a "Tech Tangents 2" channel .... Shelby explains the modification to the INF file he made.. :-)
will await the sony magic link video
@LGR I read that in your voice!
Great review of a great looking machine!
Hey, my two favorite tech nerds in one place. As a fellow nerd, I mean this with love.
You too? I thought having LGR here was enough.
@@jordanvelazquez6321 In turn Adrian recently got a nice gift from Clint to upgrade a vintage Compaq. Featured in Adrian's second channel.
69th like. lehlehleheleh tongue sounds
@@SmellsLikeEMinoractually there .. is @LGR up there too :-)
at 14:05 how many of you want that in a "Tech Tangents 2" channel .... Shelby explains the modification to the INF file he made.. :-)
that is literally the most aesthetically pleasing computer i've ever seen
I definitely agree about the look of this PC. It's odd seeing it boot Windows 98, as it looks like a newer generation of computer. In fact, it seems like it was THE computer to usher in that new era, breaking away from the beige boxes for good. A really fascinating transitional system!
Also, imagine having the reworking skills to swap out those VRAM chips... 🤔
He mentioned in another comment, it'd probably make more sense to make a DVI adapter for that monitor and use a different video card.
(What kind of connector is that, btw?)
@@AaronOfMpls Kinda reminds me of a VESA DFP connector, sort of the ancestor to DVI-D, but larger. Almost even looks like the D-Terminal connector that Japan uses on video equipment.
Mmmh so if the Vaio croaks out... I guess the Monitor becomes a paperweight huh? A bit unfortunate.
Nah compaq had Black pcs around 1996
@@horsesaremyfriends242 Toshiba had some too
That VAIO looks mint as hell. It almost feels modern...
At 10:10 I don't think that JS function gets an unending call stack. setTimeout() will put the next setBG() call on the event loop. i.e. It's not a recursive call.
Great video. I also did one on a Sony Vaio X505, the slimmest notebook in 2004. Which might also have been a prime candidate for macOS. These old Sony devices are quite beautiful in my opinion and very well build. Sad what happened to them.
I absolutely love this era of VAIO hardware. The blue colours are just awesome
I worked at Office Max in the mid / late 90's and always thought if I were to ever buy a pre-built it would be one of the Vaio's. The looks and colors were just so different from your standard case.
Late reply, but I worked for your coemption (you know who, not the depot one but the "basics" one in the UK in the second half of 2002, filling in before emigrating to the US. I still remember the Pentium 4 Vaio with the 17" widescreen LCD monitor. It was a thing of beauty and the specs were on the face of of it superb. Oh but that SiS motherboard, iy you knew your hardware in those days, this was to say the least, not the choice you would have made if building a machine at any budget. I think I favoured MSI at the time, a time when there were so many choices, but all my experience of SiS based machines through previous IT work soured me against them. They still exist, but concentrate on the SoC market apparently.
Some people: Had LCD monitors in 1999!
Me: Used a CRT till mid-2013...
Same... lol i used a crt monitor till 2012.. Then i bought a samsung syncmaster 1080p...that thing still works as new...
@@gbangyt-codmobile7037 I upgraded from my IBM CRT to a 23" FHD IPS Acer (the IBM was nice, but finally switching to 16:9 was such a relief) and yeah still works fine, I even overclocked it to 70Hz lol. Used it for about 6 years till fall 2019 then upgraded to a 240Hz 25" TN Alienware. Still got the Acer for backup and/or to use with my laptop, its not like I can get any decent amount of money for it so I kept it.
I just got back into CRTs, I can't believe how gob smackingly incredible they look, and they are so unbelievably responsive, no lag whatsoever, my 144Hz G-Sync LCD looks so washed out and feels so laggy compared to the Sony G520 21" CRT, the blacks are incredible and the colours are so inky, I want to play everything I've played on LCD again on the Sony CRT to experience it properly. And then there are retro games, they look so crisp and beautiful, scanlines @ 240p are just so satisfying. I can't seem to pull myself away from it when I'm using it, it's so fun to use lol.
I specifically bought two dell monitors from the 2000's. There's something about the rendering of colors and movement that can't be replicated by LCD's. I have a 144hz monitor but for some reason is just not as smooth as the ole 85hz 1280x1024. The 144 is faster but not smoother to my eyes
Also my middle school was rocking CRT's until 2010 which is kinda insane. I remember my teacher's still having them but once I hit hs in 2011 it was LCD's
I absolutely love this channel. The pacing and production value makes "gettin' to the goods" something you never really notice - start-to-finish, it's always wonderful to watch. The rewatchability of these clips is incredible.. especially when you consider the usually overwhelming technical nature of such content.
I watch whole movies on my computer. I play games, watch anime, watch TH-cam, etc. It is a multimedia device for me.
Congrats on the teleprompter it is a huge upgrade! Is that a Samsung's Nexus 10 under the mirror? I still have mine in its original box, love that tablet!
I had a Sony VAIO PCV-200. Got it new in 1998. I remember the cube demo screen thing very well, but only opened it a handful of times. Seeing the purple keyboard and mouse in your video brings back all sorts of nostalgia for me. Good times.
That's a cool machine. I always loved the VAIOs from that era but was in high school so I could never afford them. I recently picked up a Vaio X505 and a Vaio UX390 - two machines I lusted over when they were new, but damn were they expensive.
Hopefully they're a little more affordable now.
The inclusion of -FireWire- i-LINK and the nature of the proprietary display connector (look up HDI-45 and ADC) just add more to the Apple comparisons. But for my money the computer I was reminded of visuals-wise was the Sharp X68000, not any Mac (although it's still far from a perfect comparison).
So Sony has another model that you should look for You will absolutely be floored if you can find one Sony made a computer that has a micro computer with a CD drive bolted below the display and what’s really odd as you don’t see a lot of these machines but if you could find one it is the wildest machine you’ll ever see because it literally looks like the PC is floating under the screen
so basically like a mac?
No not like a Mac it’s literally a monitor and the computer is mounted underneath it it literally looks like a floating CD drive it doesn’t even look like a computer but these are getting really hard to find because they are literally hardware locked two windows XP
@@johnDingoFoxVelocity so it's like those mini computers where they use the vasa mount on a monitor to attach themselves? Interesting they got a full sized cd player in there.
Shelby, this is one of the best videos you've done. Bravo!
@10:12 the function actually isn't recursive because it's invoked by a new event stack scheduled by the setTimeout call each time :)
I worked at CompUSA when this launched and it was the coolest looking computer I had ever seen. I actually convinced a few people who came in to buy an Apple to buy this instead.
I remember Circuit City being full of Sony machines.
It's so cool to see these VAIO machines with the original OS and software.thanks!
I would love to get my hands on one of those VAIOs with the built-in mini disc drive.
9:45 I have a modern version of this for windows 10 called "WinDynamicDesktop" and it does something similar, I'm wondering if you could get those images and use them in WDD
i did that manually back in windows xp. i got into elder scrolls: oblivion, took screenshots with 1 in-game hour intervals in between them in the exact same scene (i actually skipped some similar shots and took extras for dawn and dusk), set the blending time for switching backgrounds for something really long, like a whole minute, and put them all in a cycle. i could make it match daylight, but i liked watching the transitions so i used it in a half-hour cycle for a day.
The stand, LCD, mouse pass through, the software etc. etc. To think how steve thought so highly of it. Amazing.
For a second, it looks like a new, low-end desktop computer! Still a beautiful design now!
Vaio's were the first computers that REALLY caught my eye. I had only had Gateways up until then. Man, those things are sleek.
That is the best use of Active Desktop I've ever seen! I'm glad someone came up with a good use for it. It's the first feature I ever tested in my career, and it died almost immediately. :)
Great video another all prebuilt I was unaware of, I must find that Compaq hat it is awesome!
remember when VAIO made desktops........yeah I remember.
1:32 for anyone that wants to know the SONY PCV-90 was the first VAIO computer they made and it came out in 1996, there was a weaker model with half the RAM and a lower clocked CPU called the PCV-70. I literally remember this it is insane. I am old
Wonderful video on this Vaio PC! I had no idea that Bleem! came out for PC, until I saw you using it in this video. And it looks like it runs pretty well on this PC.
Indeed!
As for Bleem itself ... LGR, Gaming Historian, and Wrestling With Gaming all have videos about Bleem:
- LGR -- "LGR Oddware: Bleem! Commercial PlayStation Emulator" (17:20) -- th-cam.com/video/MFY9Kv1c4-Q/w-d-xo.html
- Gaming Historian -- "From Shady to Legal: How 2 Emulators Battled Sony - Bleem & VGS" (19:40) -- th-cam.com/video/UGHul1PrXCE/w-d-xo.html
- Wrestling With Gaming -- "The Story of Bleem! - The PlayStation Emulator for the Dreamcast & PC" (9:58) -- th-cam.com/video/NSJUb9KmhNU/w-d-xo.html
_EDIT: added runtimes_
I love the patron roll at the end. I never thought a patron roll could be so creative. xD
This strikes me as a predecessor to the all-in-one desktops with built-in TV tuner that seemed really popular when I first visited Japan in 2008-2010. That kind of multimedia PC that can double as a TV does make sense for small Japanese homes with tatami-style furniture, I guess.
Nine Inch Nails The Slip! I have that album dvd combo.
Also didn't this all in one come with stylus and a touch screen? or at least another model of it?
The PCV-LX80 released in September of 2000 had a touch screen! But it only released in Japan.
I love those rare sony pc's, i own one of the first picturebooks :) lovely machine you have there my guy, i hope you get to enjoy this machine for as long as possible. And Steve Jobs LOVED Sony, he never ever did sue them, he had a lot of respect for the ceo of sony
You can gain a subscriber with one video, and I happened to cross this video, never seen your channel and decided to subscribe.
That dot matrix printer... such an original way to thank your supporters!!! 😎
I REALLY miss my Sony VAIO PCV-120 (P200MMX) I had years ago. I gave it away to a friend with the nice Trinitron monitor. This system is really great looking! I miss Sony's good stylish designs.
damn that thing switches resolutions faster than even any modern display I've used
I love these sony quirky PCs, congrats on the find and thanks for your work on the video. I have a pcv-w20 that has a few similarities. I should have tried some 3d games on it, I don't know what I was thinking on that video. I guess it's a reason to revisit, I also want to back up it's hard drive and look at it's insides, which I haven't.
Fantastic video. I had a Vaio laptop around 2003 that I used to import my hi8 sony camcorder stuff through. Loved that thing for editing simple videos in Windows Movie Maker.
Sick quality video man. And you really impressed me with editing the driver. Pray I find a good strong Vaio (preferably matching peripherals) desktop lol
That ‘hidden’ floppy drive is so slick
What a nice machine. The only thing that doesn't look quite right is the flexgate-like alternating dark and light stripes near the bottom of the screen. I wonder if it's feasible to fix that...
Man, I remember drooling over the Vaio systems at Circuit City in the mid/late 90s.
"Nobody really wants to watch a *whole* movie sitting at their computer." Bold of you to scrutinize my entire childhood :(
Wow! Videos like this really give you perspective on exactly what has taken place with consumer tech in the past 20 years. Active Desktop background changing based on time of day? 15+ years ahead of its time -- think f.lux on PCs or Night Mode on smartphones!
The design of the PC case does remind me of Sony's hi-fi A/V equipment of the same period. Hotkeys at the top of the keyboard? My 20-yr-old keyboard doesn't have those, but it reminds me I really should program those Windows global hotkeys: Ctrl + Alt + I for Internet (Firefox), Ctrl + Alt + M for Mail (open new tab & go to Gmail?), Ctrl + Alt + S to sleep, etc.
Nice work as always!
Wow....that is a cool piece of 90s tech.
I still have a Sony Vaio monitor 😃
I love this thing, imagine having this and a Playstation 2 with Linux & HDD on the same table, being something like a file server
This took me back, I did tech support for Sony computers back in this era.
I have a compaq presario computer backup in the day that has some similarities with this vaio. It came with the ATI rage lt pro 4mb, but has a slot in the mobo for upgrading memory. It came with a 4mb mitsubishi memory module for a total of 8mb. Maybe this computer also have this slot?
man the nostalgica is killing me i have to stop watching the video to not burst out in tears
That light blue accent colour is such a 90s thing. Love it.
5:25 - I honestly thought it was a microwave oven till the screen started to tilt... lol
Great video! I had a Sony computer similar to this. Loved it back in the day.
I have a complete version of this except its a japaneese l530bp I think it's almost the same. Came in the box with all the accessories but no restore cds so I'm having trouble getting the sound card to detect. I Uninstalled the aureal drivers completely and now the device shows up as a pci audio device but the drivers won't install. On the search for one of these with the cds.
Great review! I’m really impressed by the styling of this little system, definitely forward thinking for 1999. Wonder if you could dig up that MacOS installation and use it?
Never made its way outside of Apple, as far as I know. There's an early version of OSX floating around called Rhapsody which had an x86 build, that'd be the best you can do, it's missing the aqua interface though which kinda defeats the point.
@@s8wc3 I think at that would've been the Classic MacOS (OS9/8), Apple killed the licensing programme by the end of 1998 so I doubt they would've had OSX on the cards for a 3rd party like Sony.
@@amirpourghoureiyan1637 iirc apple had been building x86 versions of osx right from the beginning, so they'd be more likely to have osx ready to go for it
@@subg9165 Rhapsody/Mac Server was pretty much the staging grounds for the entire OSX development, it had the Platinum theme from 1997 until the release of the Public Beta at the tail end of 2000 - which at that point had a very barebones Aqua desktop.
@@subg9165 when I heard mention of the version for a Vaio laptop, it got me wondering if _that_ was why they had the secret x86 builds, instead of being careful for the future like he claimed in that presentation.
I love vaio computers, they were always expensive but cutting edge. Sony had external gpu in 2012, that's way before when it got popular over the years. The vaio z I had was super fast, for a 2011 laptop, it had 4 ssd running in raid 0, an i5 and a dedicated graphics card. All inside a light 13 inch carbon fiber body.
We had that machine. Loved it. First day we set it up, my dad installed StarCraft and I hogged it for hours.
10:10 TL;DR: No, there is no "self referencing function" in the code, it is not creating "an unending call stack," the resource consumption has little to do with that tightly written script shown, and much more to do with the fact you're running a full browser (HTML engine and JS interpreter), on a 200MHz PII with at most 256MB of ram, in the background just to provide a desktop.
Longer explanation:
The script is using "setTimeout" which means it's not real recursion, which means each function call is leaving the call stack before another (not nested) function is being added to the call stack, therefore insuring the stack is not growing. If it were true recursion each function call would be "nested" (placed inside the instance of the calling function, creating a memory dependance relationship), and the routine would eventually crash once it hit the limit of the JS interpreter's allocated stack memory. Most modern JS implementations have a function depth limit of about 10,000 references, likely the interpreter running this script is far less than that as JS interpreters have been HUGELY improved over the last twenty years, once you have reached that limit, the code will crash. The real resource utilization of the script would boil down to how efficiently "setTimeout" is implemented (hopefully it isn't using polling, but rather the JS event loop, which I imagine it is) within the JS interpreter itself, but it really shouldn't eat much or any CPU time if implemented correctly, and memory utilization of this script should be minimal as well.
So the comment about this being a resource hog because it uses a "self referencing function" is just not accurate (no self referencing functions here). ...and the bit about it "creating an unending call stack" isn't even possible with JS (at least not without crashing once the stack limit is reached, which would in fact end the recursion at that point).
Honestly, the most expensive thing about this, is the overhead of having a full browser implementation (HTML engine and JS interpreter) running in the background on a computer with only a 200MHz PII and 32MB - 256MB of memory. That is not much power to work with, modern computers have device controllers packing more punch than that.
I used to work at an Intel motherboard factory & we were building Vaio motherboards, right at that time in the late 1990's. The boards had internal code names & partnumbers of course, so they weren't sometimes called Vaio outright. Now of course, I would not remember exactly which motherboards as there were a few variants of Vaio, but I would not be surprised if any of those motherboards in these machines had our fingerprints on them. That might sound icky, but remember all motherboards around the world are handled by workers, both with & without gloves.
Now I'm trying to imagine a PS4 in lilac. That would be pretty neat. We had one of the VAIO laptops for a while, but it didn't work so they got rid of it. I liked it since it was tiny and cute. Shoulda tried to keep it.
I remember that I had one of the ATI Rage cards (not sure which) and in one rally game the trees looked like they were made of cardboard. I guess because not enough vram.
I also like these Sony Vaio PC's
I dont know know if they ever sold them here in the UK. Sure is a nice-looking machine, not just compared to the beige box running `95 I would have had at the time.
The colour scheme is reminiscent of the Sun UltraSparc systems ,which first appeared from 1995 in a grey and purple rather than the beige of the previous sparcstation systems.
A interesting footnote in the evolution of the pc and the multimedia features became common on most other systems, though never executed as well as the viao or the mac systems.
I'd be tempted to solder larger capacity ram chips onto the board in place of the existing ones and upgrade it to 16MB, but that is all dependent on if the ram chips are compatible with larger ones
My house is full of 5×4 LED monitors, but I've always wanted at least one 4×3 LCD. Great thing to have.
Im guessing this old slimtop PC was very cool those days...and way ahead if its time!...the PC itself reminds me of these optiplex SFF(small form factor) desktops
I wonder if you could upgrade the video RAM chips? I'm guessing that the pitch of the pads wouldnt be as bad as a more modern system?
It's beautiful - I've always loved the look of vaios
Just think if they would've gone through with that partnership what Apple and Sony would it look like together today. Unfathomable.
Hi, i have a question, where i can buy windows 98, xp and ms dos sticker for my computer's? I'm from Romania and i don't know where i need to go for these stuff to buy.
The monitor is going out. Starting to see stage light effect on the bottom of the screen
Hah! Nice irony using Bleem! on a Sony machine.
I noticed but failed to realize that 😹😹
is the HDD Windows 98 or Windows 2000? also how do I install it in a blank HDD?
Looks like a computer straight out the sims 1, lovely review, thanks
I have this pc its the PCV-L620 model it still has the original stickers on the front sadly it dosent have its original mouse or stand still have original box, keyboard and monitor.
I miss my childhood 🥺🥺 never gets better these days
Vios were always so cool, both laptops and desktops. Sadly I never came across one.
I used to watch DVDs and DVD rips on my p3 450 Coppermine with 196mb ram and some mix of HDDs I managed to scavange. Getting a PC capable of DVD playback was a milestone for me. In my teenage years I had to make do with parts I found in machines people would throw out. Used a p1 200mhz for a long time but it wasnt up to the challange. If memory serves DVDs needed a p2 333mhz at the minimum without the mpeg2 card.
Hah, that PCV-90 shown at 1:30 was my first post-Amiga PC in 1997. I also had a ginormous “laptop” of theirs in the early Aughts that had a desktop P4 CPU. Heavy, hot, zero battery life, but the screen was gorgeous.
That Vaio wallpaper is awesome!!!
Would there be any way to share it?
Great review! Love that 90's Sony design. Would be curious if it would be feasible getting Linux up and running on these types of old machines, saw you using some kind of Linux in your other videos with KDE as the DE. Would be a nice little addendum if any modern or contemporary versions of Linux ran out of the box.
Sweet!! Love your videos!
You did your best again ! Ciaoo
Great vid mate, congrats o/
6:51 - I thought of the same thing! Ain't it fitting to emulate a PS1 on a Sony VAIO just for the hell of it? LOL
This isn't the first time Sony entered the PC market, they made the Sony NEWS UNIX workstation line which was popular in Japan from 1987 - 1998 (albeit meant for an audience different from the VAIO series).
What a neat looking machine, kind of remember the blueish aspect of My Computer icon on Windows XP.
Did the 8-bit computers such as the MSX really compete with IBM PCs in the US? I would think those were completely different markets, even if only due to pricing.
The most beautiful system I've seen 👍
This pc was 11 years ahead of it’s time, i bet it can even serve now in 2021 for certain purposes.
Do you know if it can handle more RAM and a faster PIII? Imagine it using a really optimized linux distro... It would be fast enough even for some modern tasks...
Actually, my first thought was that it looked kinda like of some of the early Sun Microsystems stuff.
Back in 1999 the very best monitors for gaming was still the trusty flat screen super fine mesh NEC CRT monitor because of its high end features that gave the very best high resolution gaming features at the time.
Great review of this quirky looking sony. Is it just me or does this guy look like a bearded version of Tavarish???
Dude we had one of these! I used to sit on Liquid Generation cause this was the only computer we had that could run the site semi fast lol
Your experience with the drivers is, to me, the one flaw VAIO had throughout its history in Sony's portfolio: every single model had a proprietary quirk with their drivers. I don't know if nowadays the JIP VAIO devices come with standard stuff, but back in the day, even for the newest Windows 7 Sony VAIO laptops, you had to scour through Sony's website to get the appropriate driver because, even if the part matched, you couldn't get a standard driver to install.
As soon as I saw that background I had flashbacks. A friend of mine had one of these, and we HATED it for gaming, that 8mb of vram meant his brand new system couldn't do much more than mine, which had an older ATI Rage Pro AIW with 8mb as well. Plus for gaming at the time, the LCD was definitely a downgrade from a decent CRT, because it actually only scales images nicely some of the time. Sometimes the image would just turn to garbage when motion on screen was high. I remember spending hours tweaking and messing with settings and drivers to get the absolute most out of what it had. Though back then I did that with every computer, I was the only one in my circle of friends that would really dig in and mess with things.