game trailblazer

Chapter 15 The Troubles of Estridge
Maybe it was the first time I met Zhang Lexing who liked Mr. Yang very much, or maybe his performance during this period of time satisfied the old man. In short, after Dr. Yu proposed the idea of ​​starting a business in the United States, Mr. Yang seemed very open-minded and did not use his authority to make things difficult. , very happy to agree with Yang Xinxin to go to the United States.

After the company's future CEO is confirmed, Zhang Lexing and the three of them will need to work together in the next step.Dr. Yu flew to the United States to inquire about IBM's new machine, and then dealt with the transfer of software copyrights and was responsible for the preliminary preparations for the establishment of the company.Yang Xinxin stayed in Hong Kong and was in charge of leaving the country. In fact, the most troublesome thing about going to the United States was Zhang Lexing, a minor from China. Fortunately, the Yang family has a lot of connections, so there are still some ways to solve it.And Zhang Lexing resumed his daily life of two o'clock and one line, one at the comic studio and the other at Yang Xinxin's house. Apart from making some preparations for going to the United States, Zhang Lexing mainly focused on the comic studio. I won't have the energy to take care of it for a long time.In order to make the Kunpeng Animation Communication Co., Ltd. in preparation have a better development prospect, Zhang Lexing left the story drafts of several best-selling comics in his impression, and of course, more importantly, he left a picture containing the future RB comics. I hope that Kunpeng Animation can poach a few during the development of RB. It is very cool to make money from RB people. Of course it is even more cool to use RB people to make money from RB people.

Amidst Zhang Lexing's nervous and excited anticipation, the procedures for going to the United States were finally completed. On June 1981, 6, Children's Day, Yang Xinxin and Zhang Lexing came to the United States by plane. As soon as they walked out of the passenger passage of San Jose International Airport, they saw Dr. Yu and a tall foreigner standing there like two goose-headed geese. The foreigner was holding a big sign with the names "Yang Xinxin and Zhang Lexing" written in Chinese on it.

"Doctor, do you have a car?" Zhang Lexing pointed to the mountain of luggage dragged behind him, and smiled wryly: "It's not easy for women to go out."

Yang Xinxin couldn't help curling her lips and gave Zhang Lexing a blank look.

"The car is a little ahead." Dr. Yu looked at the height of the luggage mountain and sighed, "But it may not be easy to fit it in this way."

While the foreigner was helping with the luggage, I asked Dr. Yu, "What does this man do?"

"Oh, this is the first employee hired by the company. It's called Dennis. We can't do it alone. It's better to have a local help." Dr. Yu explained, "The company has been established and its name is VisualSystem. , we can drop by later to see the office building we just rented."

We, a group of four people and two cars (due to too much luggage, we had to rent another car), drove to the location of the company's office building.After driving for more than an hour, the car stopped in front of a small three-story building, which Dr. Yu said was the company's office building.From the outside, Zhang Lexing felt that the building looked a bit old, but after walking in with Dr. Yu, he found that the inside was still very clean and tidy.

"This building used to be a student dormitory for a nearby university. It was later converted into an office building for renting out. The rent is quite low. We rented half of the first floor this time, which is enough for a while. I have already discussed with the school. In the future When the company gets bigger, we can rent out the rest of the place, and when it gets bigger, we can find a better place." Dr. Yu said, "At present, there are only four of us, and we also hired a janitor. But tomorrow there will be some technicians coming for interviews, so it’s better for you to come to Xiaguan.”

Then the car went to Dr. Yu's house. Zhang Lexing and Yang Xinxin lived in the guest room downstairs for the time being, and they would move after finding a suitable house.After dinner, Zhang Lexing and Dr. Yu sat on the sofa and chatted, of course the main topic was about IBM.

IBM was first formed in 1911 by the merger of the International Time Recording Company, the Slide Rule Company and the Tabulating Machine Company. R Company).It was not until 1924 that C-T-R changed its name to International Business Machines Corporation, which is later known as IBM.Since entering the 70s, IBM's development speed has begun to slow down, and it has suffered defeats at DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and Wang An Company successively. When the microcomputer emerged, IBM did not pay attention to it.As a result, in 1979, IBM's net profit experienced a negative growth, which was the first time in IBM's history. Very hungry.In this context, IBM launched its own microcomputer research and development plan, and IBM's president, Cary, gave the plan a code name - "Checkers".

In fact, Dr. Yu has no acquaintances in IBM, and it was impossible to inquire about such a plan. Fortunately, Intel, which is responsible for providing the CPU in IBM's checkers project, is an important collaborator. With the help of contacts in Intel, Fortunately, Dr. Yu heard some inside information about the checkers project.

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Estridge is the person in charge of the checkers project, but now he is no longer as high-spirited as when he first took over the project team, only anger is left in his heart, but he has to suppress his anger to debug the damn DOS operating system, It's just to hope that this damn thing can run stably for a few more minutes.The thought of Estridge couldn't resist punching the desk, and he immediately began to be thankful—fortunately, the table wasn't too hard.

In fact, Estridge didn't need to be irritated by this. The operating system in the Checkers project never considered the damn DOS at all. At the beginning, Estridge even considered using IBM's own 801 processor and The operating system from the Highland Research Institute, but the chilling "high efficiency" and extremely tight design cycle of IBM's bureaucrats made him quickly give up this idea.Due to the high-level urging and IBM's internal failure to provide it on time, Estrich had to take extraordinary measures, a method that violated IBM's tradition-try to use components that can be bought directly outside, and even the operating system can only Can be outsourced.

At first, Estridge was very optimistic about the popular CP/M operating system. Of course, he was also interested in the Kylin system that became popular with VisualForm, but he couldn't find a developer at all, so he could only pin his hopes on CP/M. superior.A group of people rushed to the Digital Research Institute in Monterey to talk to Gary Kildare and plan to try his CP/M system.But when IBM's negotiators came to the door, they learned that the boss of the digital research company had gone out to work, and it was unknown when he would return. The IBM negotiators were furious. They had an appointment, but the old Kildare had run away!In desperation, they had to talk to Gary's wife, who was the assistant boss of the digital research company at the time.

It's just that the checkers plan is top secret in IBM, and no one is allowed to leak it out. Therefore, before the conversation, IBM's negotiators asked Mrs. Gary to sign a non-disclosure agreement to ensure that the content of the conversation would not be disclosed at all.Mrs. Gary naturally has no good temper because she has to sign some kind of ghost agreement without knowing anything, because once the agreement is signed, she agrees to keep everything the IBM people say confidential, and the IBM people still have the right to use any signatures. She immediately refused to sign the information that the person said.

Fortunately, when Kildare came back, he felt that there was no need to delay the business for a non-disclosure agreement, so he restarted negotiations with IBM.However, due to the urgent request of IBM, Kildare was not sure that it could be completed within the time limit, but he still introduced to IBM the overall functions and scope of application of the CP/M-86 (16-bit version of CP/M) under development. IBM was very interested, but Kildall and his wife went on vacation again, and Kildare, who was having such a good time, forgot to contact IBM again. IBM can't wait.Coupled with the experience of this period of time, they doubted the sincerity of the digital research company, and IBM had no choice but to find another way.

In this way, IBM's operating system acquisition plan failed completely, and they had no choice but to find another way out. At this time, Bill came to the door.Estridge still remembers the seemingly harmless smiling face of Liar Bill. He swears that his friend has a unparalleled operating system in his hands, and it can run on any machine with a little modification, as long as IBM agrees to let it run. As a supplier, the price can be very low.

In fact, Estridge was still a little worried about the small company of the young boy Bill, but Akers, the new chairman of the company, said: "Isn't this the company founded by Mary Gates' son Bill?" The meaning is naturally intriguing, but Estridge had no choice but to agree to Bill to supply.

With IBM's commitment to purchase, Bill Gates was ecstatic. Although he didn't even have a shadow of the operating system in his hands, it didn't matter. If he didn't have one, he could go out and look for it.Not to mention, maybe Microsoft is about to turn around. Paul Allen, the second person in the company, actually found an operating system QDOS that imitated CP/M in Seattle, and it looked good, so he bought it for $[-]. After downloading the operating system, the developer Patterson was kidnapped by the way.

When IBM's prototype came out, Bill Gates led a group of students to adapt the system. After a few weeks, they came up with a set of programs that were generally able to run, named DOS.Just a few weeks was not enough time for any innovations, so that the system was almost a replica of CP/M, and even the commands were copied.What's even more irritating is the endless bugs, so that Estridge has to personally lead a group of people to help Microsoft catch bugs, so that the checkers project team is almost becoming a Microsoft development team.

Estridge was very confused. Microsoft's DOS system was obviously not that big, but it was like a treasure chest of bugs when it was used. Whenever he thought he had almost caught the bugs, his desk would be replaced by a new Bug reports are piled high.Looking at the BUG report whose serial number has reached 330, Estridge felt nothing but helplessness.In fact, it's not that Estridge didn't think about postponing the date of hardware launch, but the officials of IBM disagreed, and they also repeatedly emphasized that the completion date of the plan cannot be changed, and the products of Checkers must be launched on time. helpless.

(End of this chapter)