Reborn America, this is my time

Chapter 242 Software is certainly the light of the future, but hardware is the mother of survival.

If Ethan's memory is correct, then the Walkman must be the world's first personal portable tape player. Just like computers with spreadsheets, human life has changed dramatically after the advent of the Walkman.

Because it revolutionized the record player and allowed people to take music with them.

To be honest, no gorgeous words can modify these products that have changed the world, because they are great enough, and the reason why Ethan is excited is not because Sony will have an extra cash cow soon, but in his memory, Sony The Walkman tape player and the Discman disc player were launched almost at the same time.

After deciding to light-storage, Ethan had sorted out the memories in his head, and then discovered a very interesting conversation——

When he was studying in his previous life, he used his New Year's money to go to a video store to buy a Walkman. When the boss noticed that he was stopping in front of the shelf and had difficulty making a choice, he took the initiative to introduce the differences between various products to him.

"Young man, Sony's Walkman is the best-selling product in our store because it is very fashionable and cool. As long as you tie it to your arm, you can become the most handsome kid in the school."

This description made Ethan very excited. At the same time, he didn't understand why having the Walkman tied to his arm would attract the attention of everyone in the school. But after he asked what he was thinking...

The boss immediately laughed and replied, "Young man, because you are very brave!"

"When the principal issued a notice stating that you are not allowed to bring Walkmans into school, and the teacher emphasized that pop music is a cancer, and you dared to walk around campus with a Walkman worth hundreds of dollars tied to your arm, then you must be this one!"

The boss gave Ethan a thumbs up.

Ethan, who was confused by him, twitched the corners of his mouth.

The speechless look made the boss laugh heartily, and at the same time he introduced the product seriously, "Young man, Sony's Walkman is indeed the best product we sell here, because it is so convenient, even if you are wearing jeans, it can It fits in your pocket, but to be honest, the sound quality is just mediocre.”

"If you want a better product, then I suggest you buy Discman, because its playback effect is better. Even Sony itself admitted in its promotion that Discman is high-fidelity, and it was also launched at the same time as Walkman. Complementary products, characterized by good sound effects.”

Yes.

Ethan learned the term hi-fi from the owner of a video store.

Of course, he admitted, he couldn't tell the effect.

In my memory, the news that Walkman and Discman were launched at the same time also came from each other.

There is no way, who told him not to have a system.

When traveling through time, the brain was not modified and did not contain an omniscient and omnipotent Wikipedia.

Therefore, Ethan actually doesn't know whether the news is right or wrong, but the truth or falseness of the news is no longer important to him now. If he is a spectator, then he can be entangled, and now that he has entered the game...

Even if Sony is not developing Discman, Ethan has to pretend that they are.

And since Sony will have the product right away...

'Special code - the situation is serious! '

Ethan cursed in his mind.

He had a hunch that he seemed to be busy again.

'The one with this special code really won't give anyone a happy birthday at all! '

He sighed secretly and continued reading.

In addition to the TCM-100, Sony also launched a new product last year, which is a 11-pixel CCD image sensor, and this thing has nothing to do with Ethan.

There is a saying that goes well, there is no such-and-such era, there is only such-and-such in the era. No matter how greedy Ethan is, he cannot monopolize all the opportunities. He is satisfied if he can build a moat for his company. As for the other of?He wouldn't force it.

Especially if he's not tech savvy.

Put down the second book of information and pick up the third.

The word Toshiba on the document made Ethan feel a little strange.

Because this company was not within the scope of his warning, and at the same time, his destiny game, Apple, Microsoft, and Western Design Company related to him, did not seem to have any business conflicts with Toshiba.

When he showed doubts, Julis also said: "Boss, although you didn't ask me to pay attention to this company, this company launched a very excellent product last year."

"I personally feel like it's going to impact us."

This judgment aroused Ethan's curiosity, and he opened the file decisively, and then his pupils suddenly shrank!
The information Julis brought came from September 26 last year, when Toshiba launched the world's first Japanese word processor, code-named JW-10.

Although this machine weighs 220 kilograms and sells for 630 million yen, it is a product destined not to be widely popularized. But in Toshiba's words, they have taken a revolutionary first step because they let The machine learned kanji and kana.

Before [-], all computers displayed English, which was very difficult for people who did not understand English. Moreover, there were many words and phrases in Japanese and English that could not be translated literally. For example, English 'I will reply (I will reply)' in Japanese may mean 'I will change', because the meaning of reply in Japanese is to answer or respond. Therefore, if the translation problem cannot be solved, then countless people in this book will They will all be eliminated by the times.

In order to solve this problem, Toshiba invented the JW-10. They implanted the unique syntactic analysis and lexical analysis in Japanese into the machine. To put it more simply, it 'taught' Japanese grammar to the word processor, fundamentally solving the problem of English to Conversion disorder in Japanese.

This behavior seems to have nothing to do with Ethan, because the company under Ethan's name is not in the business of Japanese processors, but in the future... no one can say whether Toshiba will produce other products.

"Boss, I didn't want to report this to you originally, but the Excel product makes me feel the need to report Toshiba's R&D status to you."

"Because they can release JW-10 today and sell electronic documents to major companies in this country, then they may also release their own Excel tomorrow to popularize computers in the country."

"If you invest in Microsoft and only have North America in mind, then Toshiba's invention must have nothing to do with us, but... I believe this kind of thing can't exist, right? Because we already sold the game to Japan three years ago No one can refuse a market with a population of over [-] million."

"Moreover, the accessories in this product are all developed by Toshiba itself. The CPU, ROM, and RAM are all Toshiba's own products. Even if we sent 6502 to Nintendo, Toshiba has no intention of adopting it. It’s a very scary thing.”

Julis looked at Ethan cautiously.

Ethan, who understood the meaning of her words, nodded, "I know."

Ethan closed the file and said, "I want these information, thank you."

"Scope of responsibilities." Julis pursed her lips and asked, "Then..."

"You can call me directly for this kind of thing."

"Ok~"

"Then, your salary this year has increased by 15.00%. Also, all your expenses in the notebook are actually reimbursed by the company, so... if you don't need Nintendo, you don't need Nintendo, okay?"

"Okay." Ethan's words made Julis laugh.

He also promised: "Don't worry, boss, I won't be bribed by Hiroshi Yamauchi..."

In addition to Nintendo, Sony and Toshiba, the documents Evelin brought this time also contained news from Benzi Electric, Sharp and other companies. If the previous news was not very pleasant, then now, the announcements of these two companies are... Somewhat inspiring.

After many times of cooperation with Nintendo, Benzi Electric, which recognized the 6502, decided to use the chip to produce a batch of personal computers and officially sell them to the public this year, [-].

This behavior will allow 6502 to achieve further expansion in this book and gain more market share.

At the same time, they also connected with Microsoft and purchased the computer language written by the other party.

Yes, Microsoft has gone overseas.

When he saw this, Ethan himself was shocked!

When he raised his head and cast a doubtful look at Julis, Julis also smiled and said that all this was true. More importantly, Benzi Electronics' decision was made before Excel was released.

Such a fact left Ethan speechless.

"Why?" He didn't understand.

"Maybe Microsoft's products are better?" Julis didn't know the answer either.

Since he had no clue, Ethan decided to take some time to ask Bill Gates directly.

Put it down and look at Sharp.

The company, which is about the same size as Sony, is chasing its peers.

They decided to release a line of magnetic cassette recording products this year.

Although Ethan understands that Sharp's move does not threaten Sony at all, because in his memory, Sony defeated all opponents in the field of Walkman. It was not until Jobs returned to Apple and launched the iPod that music entered the digital age. but……

Akio Morita didn’t open his clairvoyance!
Therefore, after Sharp announced its future plans, Sony Group was indeed a little panicked.

In an interview with reporters, they said that they have a large leading advantage in the field of cassette tapes. They are not afraid of competition and welcome other companies to join in, study together, and make progress together...

After sending Julis away, Ethan, who was leaning on the sofa, felt a little emotional. The speed of information transmission in this era is really too slow, and the major media are too stingy in reporting foreign news.

Sony is about to launch a Walkman, but the result is that there is no louder sound in North America?

Is this special code for arrogance?Or arrogant?

If before, during the election of Daizong and Renzong, the biased behavior of various newspapers and major radio stations made Ethan want to start a media, then now, he really can't stand the environment of an information cocoon.

Unfortunately, now is not the time for mixed business operations.

Not only is there not enough money, but there is also not enough energy.

If not, he would definitely call Ballmer and ask the bald man to buy him an ABC.

Then, while he was leaning on the sofa shaking his legs, bang, the TV station came.

Hehe ~
After thinking wildly for a while, Ethan finally got up and walked into his sister's office. When he found out that Sony's optical disc was about to be released, he wanted to know how his own optical storage research was going. Evelin didn’t know how to answer this question.

"Although Robert Hall gives me R&D reports every month, you need to go to the site to see the specific situation. He doesn't know how to describe the current R&D status to you, and I can't summarize his report. Let me tell you what caused this situation..."

"Very complicated."

Ethan frowned at his sister's words.

He really doesn't know now. Is there anything in this world that Evelin can't summarize?

After he and his sister took a charter flight to the General Laboratory in Los Angeles, Robert Hall, an expert in the eyes of the public and a brat in the eyes of Fred Terman, showed them his research.

Then--

Ethan was startled.

What comes into view is a box the size of a shoulder-resistant player. On both sides of the box is a dark speaker, which is about the size of a human head. In the middle of the two speakers, there is an embedded As for the size of the disc bayonet, it's about four and a half inches?

Ethan's eyelids jumped when he saw such a huge object, because he clearly remembered that he had told Robert Hall about his needs. What he wanted was a palm-sized optical disc player, but now...

Does this player, which looks like a box, want him to perform as a black man carrying a coffin on the street?
Just when he was about to question it, the little old man Robert Hall took out a disc without any label and directly inserted it into the embedded bayonet of the box.After pressing the red button on the machine, a burst of melodious music came from the speaker the next second.

Ethan admitted that he didn't understand music at all, and he couldn't tell the quality of the sound at all, so when the music appeared, his first reaction was that this thing was done, because the sound he heard now was different from the sound on the street. There is almost no difference in the sound played by the speakers, and the second reaction is that the project is bad.

Because Robert Hall has been researching for so long, he actually came up with a product that can be seen everywhere on the street!If waiting for a few years and spending millions will only have this effect, then...

What a waste of investment he has!
Seemingly seeing Ethan's surprise and confusion, Robert Hall turned the knob on the machine and raised the volume to the maximum. He finished one song and started another. After listening to three songs, the old man finally Turn off the machine and ask Ethan if he has any discoveries of his own.

This question made Ethan turn his head decisively, "No."

"Hahaha——" The neat answer made Robert Hall laugh.

"Okay, Okay, I won't embarrass you anymore."

Robert Hall turned his attention to Evelin and asked, "Did you find anything?"

"Yes." Evelin nodded, "It seems to make no noise."

"?" Ethan didn't understand.

Robert Hall smiled and clapped his hands and said, "Yes, it has no noise."

While talking, he took out another CD and put it into another small box. Compared with the music player just now, this box suddenly became much slimmer, and there was a dark stick on the back of his butt. cable, connected to a Sony TV.

Repeat the operation, turn on the TV, and then Universal's logo appears on the screen, and Spielberg's "Jaws" appears in front of everyone.

Ethan didn't understand why the old man wanted to watch "Jaws" for him, but he still stared at the screen patiently. After playing it for about 5 minutes, Robert Hall turned off the machine and took out a disc that was already on the market. The machine was exactly the same as the Magnavox VH-8000 that Spielberg had given Ethan before. He inserted the disc marked with the "Jaws" logo and played it again.Then--

Ethan discovered something unusual.

When watching the Magnavox VH-8000 discs jointly developed by Philips and MCA, every once in a while, the picture on the TV will have some problems. It will either shake or blur for a second, and then return to normal. .

Of course, these problems are not obvious.

If people just lounge on the sofa and enjoy themselves, they most likely won't notice it.

But when using Robert Hall's machine to watch the disc, all the pictures were normal. There was no jitter or blur within 5 minutes of viewing.

This situation made Ethan frown. He always felt that he had discovered something, but he didn't understand it.

After discovering that Ethan stretched his neck, as if he wanted to get into the TV to see if there was something wrong with the settings inside, Robert Hold immediately laughed and said, "It seems you have discovered it?"

The next second, he asked himself and answered, "Yes, what you found is all my research in the past two years."

Robert Hall stood up, patted the big black box he developed, and said with joy: "The principle of optical storage is actually very simple, that is, using light to read or write data in the underlying optical medium, but No company on the market can execute the entire process perfectly.”

"There are various problems with existing optical disc players on the market. Take this product from Philips and MCA as an example. In their player, there is no mechanical contact between the optical pickup unit and the optical disc. . The information on their discs is in the form of a spiral track made up of a series of pits and flat areas called lands."

"In Philips' design, the length of the pit and the land is a continuous variable. During operation, the laser beam in the machine scans the track. When the spot of the beam falls on the land, the light is almost completely reflected. .The light is then detected by a photodiode."

"In an ideal world, the photodiode output signal would be an unbiased representation of the original recorded signal. Unfortunately, this is almost impossible because there are bound to be sources of error present on the disc."

"There are many sources of errors. For example, during the copying process, small unwanted particles or air bubbles may appear on the disc, which can cause errors when the laser reads the information."

"For another example, fingerprints or scratches left on the plastic material due to improper operation during firing will make the output signal of the photodiode different from the original record."

"It is precisely because of these accidents that people will find that when they just watch a DVD, the picture will be good or bad."

"I can't fix the improper operation, but I have fixed the reading problem."

"To solve this problem, I chose to modify the disc track from a continuous variable to a discrete variable, mask the read loss with replacement detection, and stop the output of the blank data layer."

"That's why you will find that when the music is switched, the noise of switching music is gone, and when watching the video, the picture will not shake or be blurred."

"That means - the research has been completed?" Ethan was a little excited.

“And this technology is different from Philips’?”

Although he couldn't understand it, he was greatly shocked.

And those words that couldn't be more straightforward also made Robert Hall's expression stagnant.

While he was still telling the story happily, the flames of anger arose in him for a moment, but the next second, he died like an eggplant beaten by frost.

Because he knew that no matter how loud the scolding was, it would not change the fact that Ethan was a layman.

He waved his hand, too lazy to say anything more.

Evelin smiled and said: "This is considered a success, but there is still some way to go before it is launched on the market."

“Because these machines are so big now.”

"It's going to take time to condense."

"As for the technology you said is different from Philips? This is indeed true."

"Although I don't understand optics, I know that there is only one possibility to change the track of the optical disc from a continuous variable to a discrete variable, and that is to change a different signal source."

"It is recorded in the technology disclosed by Philips and MCA that they use an analog signal like a television set. Because the analog signal is continuous and has infinite values, the length of the pit and the land must be continuous so that Can express those values ​​accurately, but—"

"It's different if we're separated, right?"

"Robert?"

"Yes." Evelin's words made Robert Hall let out a sigh of relief and said with a smile: "I tried to use binary instead, that is, 0 and 1, and it worked."

"Oh, 0 and 1?" Evelin raised her voice and became interested, "Then is it much easier to burn discs in this way than Philips? Because we only need to burn it once. Burning If the place is 1 or 0, then the unburned place will be opposite to get the data."

"Yes!" Robert Hall was very happy that someone could understand him.

“This method greatly reduces our workload!”

No matter how enthusiastic they were talking, Ethan couldn't get into it because he didn't understand.

Not to mention that he doesn't understand optics, even in physics, he has seven or six orifices and knows nothing.

But this does not affect his mood.

Robert Hall put a smile on his face when he learned that he had achieved results.

Because this is a good thing!
This means that their home consoles will be able to use optical discs in the future!
This means that they no longer have to look at the faces of those guys selling storage!

This means that they can directly develop large-scale games after the disc technology matures!

And this is actually the benefit of mastering core technology!
When the computer that makes the game, the processor that supports the game, and the storage device that hosts the game are all in their own hands...

It doesn't matter if other people have good ideas.

Because they can't do it.

Software is certainly the light of the future, but hardware is the mother of survival!

And grasping it with both hands is hard?
"Hahahaha-"

After leaving General Laboratory, Ethan, who got into the car, couldn't hold back anymore and laughed wildly.

Evelin was startled by her neurotic behavior.

But after seeing Ethan cover his cheeks in excitement, she didn't bother to worry about it.

Because after making "Starry Sky", she finally understood why Ethan insisted on developing optical storage. When the price of storage media on the market remained high, it was indeed possible to lower costs by changing the angle and thinking. Of course, It’s also possible to get more.

Ethan is very satisfied with the progress of Robert Hall's research and development of optical storage, and what makes him even more satisfied is the preparation of competitions related to video games.Because of the efforts of Steve Ballmer, there are two more sponsors for the event.

One is the Los Angeles Times and the other is Hewlett-Packard.

The former does not pay sponsorship fees, but will report the progress of the competition to the outside world in real time.For example, the first round of auditions in California ended on a certain day, and so-and-so created the best score on the spot and passed as many levels as possible.

Due to the limited space in newspapers and periodicals, it is impossible for them to report all the competitions in the North American continent, so except for California, they only select the reports with good results.

This behavior seems very crude, but——

It’s the first time to do it, and everyone is not familiar with it. It’s enough to allow the outside world to have a special channel to understand it. As for making it known to everyone like future e-sports competitions?
Forget it, there is no Internet in this era.

As for HP...

When Ethan saw this name, he was a little surprised.

Although he and the founder of HP had met once before, at the press conference of "Pac-Man", they did not have a close friendship, let alone any contact.

Now suddenly sponsored?

"What's going on?" Ethan asked.

Ballmer replied: "They want to get into the personal computer industry."

"They will use the 6502 and hope to get Excel support."

"As for the configuration, they will be on par with Apple, but because of the late launch, they said they will not pose any threat to Apple for the time being."

"Oh——" Ethan understood.

In what year did HP officially enter the computer industry?

Ethan really doesn’t know this yet.

But before he traveled through time, HP was the world's second largest seller of personal computers.

Since HP sold computers in his previous life, it is not surprising that he chose to enter the industry now. As for why he wanted to show his kindness?People have already given the answer.

Excel is the representative of productivity!
In this case--

"Okay, accept it."

He handed the document back.

Ballmer didn't leave.

"What? Is there anything else?" Ethan asked.

"Yes." Ballmer nodded honestly and said, "Boss, are you really not going to participate in tomorrow's interview?"

"What?" Ethan didn't understand.

"It's about announcing the game to the outside world." Ballmer said: "We will accept a joint interview with the NFL, which is an exclusive interview from NBC. They will record a VCR for us, and then broadcast it on the Eastern Conference on February [-] It will air at [-]pm."

"Oh, didn't I leave this matter to you?" Ethan remembered.

"But this is your company." Ballmer shrugged and looked at Ethan calmly. "Boss, I can stand on the stage of the press conference to introduce "Windfall" to people and tell people about "Hurricane". Rescue," but there's no way I could reveal Snake 2 to them."

"Because the whole world knows that this is your work."

"They are all your followers."

The cult-like speech made Ethan stunned for a moment, and then he couldn't laugh or cry.

"Oh - Steve - were you struck in the head by lightning?"

"I'm running a company! I'm not doing pyramid schemes, okay?"

"How could you describe my press conference as preaching?"

Having said that, Ethan still thinks Ballmer is right.

After all, every top product manager is a missionary.

"Okay, do you have a manuscript? Let me take a look." Ethan refused to shirk.

"Here." Ballmer handed over the manuscript he had prepared.

After a quick glance, the formulaic questions and answers made him shake his head.

"That's it?!"

He threw the manuscript aside.

"This question-and-answer reveal you set up is really meaningless!"

"In this way, I will rewrite the script and record it directly tomorrow!"

"You can go do other things now, bye!"

　Note: ① TCM-100 is indeed a test version of Walkman, or in other words, Sony did not have much confidence in portable players at the beginning because music copyright was too troublesome, so they first launched a TCM-100 recording device , to see if the public can accept this kind of handheld player. 50 units sold very well, so they struck while the iron was hot and launched the Walkman. But even so, before the sales exploded, Akio Morita's positioning of this product was only three in six months. Thousands of units. ②The personal computer written in the article launched by Benzi Electric in 8000 was the first computer produced by Benzi Electric. Before that, they had imported or purchased spare parts for assembly because they could not make a CPU.In reality, the PC-80 launched by Benzi Electric also uses Laomi's chip, which was modified from the Z80. The Z6502 is as famous as the [-] as the cheap king. ③It is true that Benzi Electric uses Microsoft programming language.It’s not that I’m bragging in the article, it’s that Microsoft is so awesome in reality. They had already gone overseas before taking on IBM’s order. ④The optical storage information in the article comes from Philips' own book, which talks about their contribution to the CD industry. ⑤ HP did enter the market after seeing the potential of computers to change the world, which cost them five years in vain. ⑥ MLM existed in the United States after World War II, and it was not a BUG.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)