Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1314 Red and White Game Machine

The earliest domestically produced game consoles appeared in the late 80s. At that time, the red and white machines launched by Nintendo cost as much as 800 yuan, equivalent to the annual income of many Chinese working-class families. This also became Nintendo’s entry into China. The biggest obstacle on the continent.

However, in the era when intellectual property rights were unknown, a Zhongshan Rihua Electronics Factory with an annual loss of up to 200 million was keenly aware of the business opportunities. Under the leadership of the factory director Duan Yongping, it started the business of imitating Nintendo FC consoles. And launched the first product "Family D1", which completely reproduced Nintendo's Famicom in terms of shape, and the price is only 25/1 of the original version. This is the original prototype of the Xiaobawang game console.

Later, in the 90s, Xiaobawang successfully advertised on CCTV, and Xiaobawang learning machines and game consoles began to enter thousands of households.

"Little Overlord has endless fun" has become the collective childhood memory of the post-80s and post-90s generations in China. Duan Yun also had such a learning machine in Duan Yun's home. In order to convince his mother, Duan Yun lied that he wanted to buy a learning machine. I learned to type, but in the end that learning machine became a game console.

In the eyes of many people in China, Nintendo's FC game console seems to be full of various high-tech, but in fact FC is developed as a toy, with no high-tech at all, and all of them are international common technologies.

At that time, the CPU of FC and the Apple 2 were common, and both used the 6502 chip. At that time, another popular CPU in the game industry was the Z80, which was a cheap version of the 8088 chip. Both use 90 chips.

Because the 6502 is a product developed in the mid-70s, it is an 8-bit microprocessor that supports a maximum memory of 64KB, and because the requirements for the manufacturing process are relatively low, the volume rate of the 6502 is surprisingly high.

In the last century in mainland China, FC compatible machines and Xiaobawang learning machines, which were popular all over the country, and Wenquxing, which was almost owned by everyone later, all used 6502 CPU. The most used is the UA8088 produced by Taiwan Lianhua Electronics.

Xiaobawang Electronic Industry Co., Ltd. was established in 1991. The first Xiaobawang game console was born in June of the same year, and the first advertisement was broadcast on China Central Television for 1 yuan. Xiaobawang sold that year It sold 6 million units, ranking first in the domestic game console market.

But in 1988, it was not easy to make such a game console in China. The main reason is that the current mainland China cannot buy such 90 chips from abroad in large quantities like in the early 6502s. Shenzhen Electronics Some parallel chips imported from Hong Kong can be bought in the market, but due to the increased price of Hong Kong merchants, the price of these chips is at least 2~3 times higher than the international market price, and the quantity that can be supplied is very small, so it is impossible to provide Hundreds of thousands of millions of pieces of supply.

Another point is that general-purpose CPU chips can be pirated and imported from abroad, but some special-purpose chips are not so easy. One thing is that although SFC's CPU also uses a general-purpose 6502 chip, the audio part is Spu ​​65816 customized by Sony. Taiwan has no ability to imitate it, and it is also not available in the market.

However, Duan Yun's company has the ability to issue chips. It is not difficult to imitate this kind of product in the late 70s, and his group company is much stronger than the earliest Xiaobawang company. Samples, then this game console will soon be able to be mass-produced.

That morning, after Duan Yun signed the first batch of 10 chip orders with Pei Dashi from the South Korean Venus Society, he was the host at noon. The two Korean guests were invited to have lunch at the Xi'an Hotel in Shenzhen, and they talked happily with each other.

In the afternoon, Duan Yun drove to Shenzhen Electronics Building.

Nintendo's red and white game console was still a rare commodity in China at that time. When it first came out in 83, the domestic price was 300 yuan. Due to domestic inflation, in 800, the price of this game console The price has become [-] yuan, which is equivalent to the annual income of an ordinary Chinese family, and not many people can afford it.

Duan Yun bought two Hong Kong-version Nintendo Famicoms for 1600 yuan, and then drove back to the R&D center of the chip factory.

After arriving at the R&D center, Duan Yun immediately convened a meeting with all the technicians of the chip R&D team.

"Manager Duan, do you mean that you want us to imitate the chips in this game console?" Huang Lingyi said in surprise after learning about Duan Yun's intentions.

Because after Huang Lingyi came to Tianyin Electronics Factory, the research and development task assigned to them was a very advanced three-micron process NAND flash memory chip. However, this Xiaobawang game console uses a 6502 chip that is almost bad in the world. Huang Lingyi couldn't figure out why Duan Yun asked them to imitate such a backward chip for products from the 70s.

"I know that the task of your project team is relatively heavy, but it shouldn't be too difficult to imitate the chip of this game console?" Duan Yun asked.

At present, there are many chipset personnel in the R&D center. There are more than 10 senior technicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and other institutes. Except for Huang Lingyi, these people are actually the top high-end talents in China with the ability to be independent, so Duan Yun I want to separate a few people from this group to temporarily engage in the imitation of game console chips.

"In that case..." Huang Lingyi turned to look at the other people in the conference room, and asked, "Which one of you knows more about this game console chip?"

Huang Lingyi is the person in charge of the NAND scattered memory chip project, so although she has the ability to imitate this kind of chip, because of the task, she can only let others do it.

"I think this matter should be left to me." At this time, a middle-aged man sitting diagonally opposite Huang Lingyi suddenly responded, and said to Duan Yun: "I have come into contact with the chip used in this game console before. It is a 6502 chip produced by WDC in the United States. It turned out that our department has also conducted research and analysis on this chip. The original plan was to imitate the technology of this chip and make a brand new 204 chip for use in domestic computers. Then the project was cancelled...”

"Mr. Chen, then you will be in charge of the imitation work of this kind of game console chip." Duan Yun recognized that this person was Chen Xiangnan, a senior engineer from the BJ Microelectronics Research Institute, and then asked: "How much do you need?" Please make a list of manpower and funds and report to me, and three months is not enough?"

"Their chip technology has been developed more than 10 years ago, and it is very easy to imitate it now. If I have enough funds, I can make a design plan for the imitation chip in two months!" After taking a look at the disassembled game console circuit board, he said confidently.

(End of this chapter)