Countercurrent 1982

Chapter 1316 Game Cassette
The previous cassette used ROM chip, which is a very early storage chip product. Its characteristic is that once the data is stored, it can no longer be changed or deleted. Nintendo’s earliest red and white game cassettes used ROM. Cassettes, from the late 20s to the mid-70s, most home game consoles still used ROM cassettes as storage media.

But Duan Yun has better Flash chips, which can read and write faster than ROM chips, and have a larger capacity.

For example, in the early 80s, the storage capacity of Nintendo’s game cassette ROM card was only 128K. At that time, semiconductor storage chips had a small capacity and were expensive, so the game cassettes at that time were very expensive. 2. Or the 1-in-4 small game cassettes of Tank Elf, Fire Phoenix, and Big Bee. Each game is only a few tens of KB, and I sold it for more than 1 yuan a disc, which was a very expensive price at the time.

However, the Flash flash memory chip currently produced by Duan Yun has a storage capacity of 512KB, which is four times the storage capacity of general-purpose cassettes on the market, which means that using flash chips can make cassettes that store more games.

For consumers, spending the money on one cassette to enjoy several games at the same time is an absolutely value-for-money choice for them, and Duan Yun’s flash chip cassette can make 4-in-1 8, 1-in-16, 1-in-20, and even 1-in-[-] value-added cartridges come out. In this case, not only can the added value of the cartridge be increased, but also it can take the absolute lead in the domestic game market by virtue of its technical advantages. status, so that those manufacturers who imitate the Famicom cannot compete with Tianyin Electronics at all.

Duan Yun's plan is to make this learning machine into a finished product within two months, and then start mass production and put it on the market.

It takes half a year to a year at the fastest for an electronic product to go from development to product finalization, and then to launch on the market. However, it takes only two months to develop a new product. In the eyes of other companies , This is simply like the Arabian Nights.

However, Duan Yun, the Tianyin Electronics Group, has such strength.

The main reason is that this is just an imitation, and the technical threshold of the learning machine itself is not high. Moreover, this is a product in the early 80s. To imitate such a thing, it is nothing to Tianyin's R&D department. Difficulty can be said, as long as the core chip is solved, other difficulties can be easily solved.

In fact, Duan Yun doesn't like copying foreign electronic products, but now that his group company is getting bigger and bigger, he needs to make his own chip factory run at full capacity, and at the same time, he needs to feed more than 20 holding companies below. .

The games of the learning machine can directly reproduce classic Nintendo games, such as Super Mario, Contra and other classic cassettes, but the learning software that comes with the learning machine must be developed by itself.

At present, the software development team of Tianyin Electronics is led by Jiang Guomingwei, but the team led by Jiang Mingwei mainly develops and upgrades Eda software, and develops this learning machine software. Duan Yun needs another software team.

Some time ago, Duanyun recruited a large number of computer software developers from Guangzhou and Shenzhen. These people are different from industrial engineers like Jiang Mingwei. They are real programmers with good software development capabilities.

So some time ago, Duan Yun compiled them into a project team separately, and named the project team "Spark Studio", which means that he hopes these people can spark the spark of wisdom and make excellent software products.

The project team leader is led by Guo Huaichang from BJ Institute of Computer Science, and the rest of the project team are all young college students majoring in computer science under the age of 30.

Duan Yun's original purpose of setting up "Spark Studio" was actually to allow them to develop MP3 software.

Duan Yun saw the early prototype of MP3 software MPEG-1 developed by a German technology company at the IFA exhibition in Germany, and immediately had the idea of ​​manufacturing MP3 players.

However, in the current production of MP3, in addition to the lack of hardware technology, the software is also developed to the best level. Compared with the MP3 software of the previous life, the MPEG-3 compression ratio of the original version of MP1 is only 4:1, which is less than 3:1. The compression ratio of MP10 software is half of 1/3, so Duan Yun wants to plan in advance and set up a professional software team in China, based on the MPEG-[-] version, as early as possible earlier than other international software teams, to develop the final Version MP[-].

So in the nearly three months since the team was established, they spent most of their time researching audio compression software, and Duan Yun is going to give them a new task this time, asking them to develop the built-in learning software of the learning machine.

The early Xiaobawang learning machine learning software included Wubi character input system, learning cartoons, including keyboard exercises, typing games, music appreciation, 5-stroke exercises, programming and arrangement, BASIC programming and other learning functions.

In fact, these learning software are very simple in terms of programming, and the capacity of the cassette is impossible to load more complex software with too many functions. In fact, it only needs to allow people to learn 5 strokes of typing, which is enough to meet the needs of current domestic consumers. There is no need to develop too many learning functions, and the real selling point of this learning machine is actually the game function.

Duan Yun also has a good understanding of software development. That night, he wrote a list of software development projects, and put forward suggestions and requirements for each function. Then, in the early morning of the next day, he came to the R&D center of Spark In the studio, all the members of the studio were called for a small meeting, and the learning machine software development tasks were assigned to them.

For the top domestic programmers with high salaries in the studio, the task Duan Yun entrusted to them this time is not difficult at all. Guo Huaichang assured Duan Yun that it only takes a week for them Duan Yun was very satisfied with making learning machine software.

After all the work was arranged, Duan Yun immediately arranged for the chip factory to start production with horsepower. The output increased from the previous 1000 pieces per day to 2 pieces per day. In addition to the 10 chips, another 50 flash chips will be stored for the production of learning machine cassettes.

Duan Yun Electronics Factory now mainly produces repeaters, and there is no extra capacity to produce learning machines and game cassettes, so he plans to hand over the production of learning machines and cassettes to his subordinate enterprises.

Telling Group currently has 21 holding companies, including Xiao Qiang's circuit board factory, He Shufen's transformer factory, Zhou Jianglong's electrical switch factory, etc., and also includes some production of electronic components, as well as assembly plants for tape recorders and Walkmans. It involves all aspects of the electronic product supply chain.

And Duan Yun is making game consoles, in fact, it is also to feed these holding companies of his own...

(End of this chapter)