3 ms·

It is painfully simple to find some example of tradition or technology focused engineering without regard to price in almost any piece of Sony hardware. Be it c

by dfox 14y ago

It is painfully simple to find some example of tradition or technology focused engineering without regard to price in almost any piece of Sony hardware. Be it custom Sony ASICs in almost anything, overly complex mechanical constructions, PCB layouts that are optimized for obsolete manufacturing processes (there is certain Japanese layout style, which leads to boards that are insanely expensive to manufacture, at least anywhere outside Japan) or proprietary formats (ATRAC, UMD, MemoryStick ...) and overly complex interfaces (compare Game Cube and PS1/2 controller interface), and tendency to have hardware support for almost never used and often even never implemented features (just look at how much things were dropped in slimed-down versions of each playstation, or for how long did Bravia TV's had MS slot, USB and even later Ethernet ports marked "service only")

brusch 14y ago
can you elaborate on the PCBs ? Just wondering what "Japanese layout style" means. Too many layers ? Not crowded enought ?
- dfox 14y ago
  Board level: Lots of empty space and jumper wires, mostly single-sided (and single sided boards with screen-printed conductive ink are surprisingly common). Almost OCD approach to service markings. Wave soldered SMT on bottom side of single-sided THT board. Two-sided boards on phenolic paper with screen printed carbon vias. Process testing structures (trace impedance etc.) on each board and not common for whole panel. Incredible amounts of test points each individually marked in silkscreen. Affinity to build complex single-sided boards. Japanese specific components, mostly hybrid ICs combining different standard dies in one package, in Sony's case often completely standard components that are manufactured by Sony itself as second source with completely different markings and sometimes packages and pinouts. System level: boards are mostly not self contained modules but designed all together (I have just seen some Yamaha design that essentially uses board to board connector and whole connected board as jumper wire). Lots of glue logic placed on random boards of whole system. Many instances of mostly empty single-sided boards with only connectors and jumper wires. Complex interconnect topologies between separate boards. In my opinion this comes from history of Japanese electronics manufacturing, they after all started doing SMT in 60's or 70's. All this looks to be optimized for small scale prototyping runs and custom robotic assembly of large series, while most western designs are optimized towards mid-scale series using existing automation. Generally you get designs that look like simple Chinese designs optimized for large scale manual assembly (toys etc.), but are orders of magnitude more complex. Look inside random DVD drive (as most of them are ODM'd by Sony, and by the way, when you want to buy new DVD drive try to find one that has Sony brand, as it is significantly cheaper) to see what I mean, in almost any HP laser printer it is painfully obvious which part is designed by HP and which is unmodified part of Canon's print engine (although there it is mostly because of different manufacturing processes).

by dfox 14y ago

brusch 14y ago

can you elaborate on the PCBs ? Just wondering what "Japanese layout style" means. Too many layers ? Not crowded enought ?

dfox 14y ago
Board level: Lots of empty space and jumper wires, mostly single-sided (and single sided boards with screen-printed conductive ink are surprisingly common). Almost OCD approach to service markings. Wave soldered SMT on bottom side of single-sided THT board. Two-sided boards on phenolic paper with screen printed carbon vias. Process testing structures (trace impedance etc.) on each board and not common for whole panel. Incredible amounts of test points each individually marked in silkscreen. Affinity to build complex single-sided boards. Japanese specific components, mostly hybrid ICs combining different standard dies in one package, in Sony's case often completely standard components that are manufactured by Sony itself as second source with completely different markings and sometimes packages and pinouts. System level: boards are mostly not self contained modules but designed all together (I have just seen some Yamaha design that essentially uses board to board connector and whole connected board as jumper wire). Lots of glue logic placed on random boards of whole system. Many instances of mostly empty single-sided boards with only connectors and jumper wires. Complex interconnect topologies between separate boards. In my opinion this comes from history of Japanese electronics manufacturing, they after all started doing SMT in 60's or 70's. All this looks to be optimized for small scale prototyping runs and custom robotic assembly of large series, while most western designs are optimized towards mid-scale series using existing automation. Generally you get designs that look like simple Chinese designs optimized for large scale manual assembly (toys etc.), but are orders of magnitude more complex. Look inside random DVD drive (as most of them are ODM'd by Sony, and by the way, when you want to buy new DVD drive try to find one that has Sony brand, as it is significantly cheaper) to see what I mean, in almost any HP laser printer it is painfully obvious which part is designed by HP and which is unmodified part of Canon's print engine (although there it is mostly because of different manufacturing processes).