game trailblazer

Chapter 3. New discoveries in the computer room

There was no wind outside, the weather was fine, the sun was lazily hanging in the eastern sky, Zhang Le walked to become a monk, and gently closed the door behind him.The dormitory area is a large area of ​​bungalows, which are divided into two sides along the road. Zhang Lexing walked quickly along the road between the bungalows to the factory area, intending to go in and see if there is any good opportunity.The dormitory is not far from the factory area. Zhang Le walked for 10 minutes and arrived at the factory gate. The big characters "State-run Hongwei Machinery Factory" are hung on the factory gate. These characters look old and have many mottled marks.In the reception room next to the gate, Li Bo, the grey-haired doorman, was sitting on a chair reading a newspaper, occasionally looking up.When Zhang Le walked to the gate, Li Bo just raised his head.

After looking up and down for a while, Uncle Li asked, "Oh, it's Lexing. Why do you want to come to the factory today? Is there something wrong?"

"Uncle Li, I came to see Uncle Zhao, is he in the factory?" Zhang Lexing casually found a reason.

"Hmm..." Uncle Li scratched his short hair and thought for a while, then said, "I saw him coming in the morning, but I have been sitting here since then, and I didn't see him go out, so he should still be in the factory."

"Thank you Uncle Li, then I'll go in and find Uncle Zhao." Zhang Lexing happily ran into the factory.

Uncle Zhao is a neighbor of Zhang Le's family. The relationship between the two families has always been good, and they often visit each other when they have nothing to do.Uncle Zhao is in charge of managing the computer room in the factory, but the computers these days are still very primitive, and Zhang Lexing has no hope at all. The reason why Uncle Zhao's banner is used is mainly to facilitate his sneaking into the factory.

The factory area is very huge. In his previous life, Zhang Lexing had never figured out what exactly the factory did. However, the experience of sneaking into the reading room some time ago gave him a certain understanding of the roads in the factory.According to previous impressions, Zhang Lexing was groping forward in the factory area, turned a few turns, and when he passed a small white two-story building, suddenly there was a shout from upstairs.

"Le Xing, why are you going?"

Zhang Lexing looked in the direction of the voice, and it was a coincidence that it was Uncle Zhao.

"Uncle Zhao, what a coincidence. I'm bored at home, and I wander around the factory casually." Zhang Lexing shouted upstairs.

"Come up, come up," Uncle Zhao waved upstairs, "There is no one here today, let's go to Uncle Zhao's place to play."

Although Zhang Lexing was not interested in Zhao Shuna's computer, it was hard to refuse in this situation, so he could only pretend to be happy and go upstairs.As soon as he reached the second floor, Uncle Zhao enthusiastically came over and grabbed Zhang Lexing's arm, dragging him towards the house.

As soon as he walked into the computer room, Zhang Lexing found that it was a little different from usual. Usually there were two or three staff members in white coats here, but today there was no one there. Maybe that's why Uncle Zhao asked him to come in to play.After changing shoes and wearing a white coat, Zhang Lexing and Uncle Zhao walked into the computer room together, and there were several devices covered with white cloths on a row of desks against the wall.Uncle Zhao came to a desk and lifted the white cloth to reveal the computer underneath.Zhang Lexing leaned over to take a look, the nameplate on the computer panel was a little blurry, and the model could no longer be seen clearly, but the appearance was still very different from the computer he was familiar with.This computer does not have a floppy drive, and a panel full of indicator lights replaces the monitor. Even the keyboard keys look very different. Zhang Lexing understands without thinking too much. The instruction set of this computer is definitely not familiar to him. And when the output is so unintuitive, debugging the program may also be a painful thing.

Maybe it was because of some experience during this time, Uncle Zhao excitedly took out a stack of densely written paper, and began to type hard on the keyboard. After more than ten minutes of work, the indicator lights on the panel began to light Flash up.

"So, this thing is quite interesting." Uncle Zhao said with some complacency.

Zhang Lexing had no choice but to nod repeatedly, pretending to be shocked.After receiving the satisfactory results, Uncle Zhao lowered his head and indulged in keyboard input again.Zhang Lexing felt a little bored, so he walked around the room slowly, trying to see if there were other interesting things, and soon his eyes were attracted by a few cardboard boxes piled up in a corner of the supplies.

Zhang Lexing came to the box, squatted down and looked at it carefully.The words "APP...Computer" were printed on the outside of the carton, which seemed to have something to do with computers, but unfortunately the other words were either covered or blurred, and it was impossible to tell what it was.

"Uncle Zhao, what is this?" Zhang Lexing asked Uncle Zhao curiously.

Uncle Zhao looked up and said: "Oh, this one. It should be brought back by the factory leader when he went abroad for inspection. It is said to be the most advanced computer abroad. It's a pity that no one will use it after moving it back. The information in the package is all in foreign languages. No one in the factory can understand it, not even the two college students who came to the factory last year. There is no way, so we have to pile it up like this first."

"Uncle Zhao, it's a pity to just pile them up like this." Zhang Lexing said regretfully, "Well, can I have a look?"

"This, um..." Uncle Zhao thought for a while, and said: "Okay, let's take a look, but don't break it, or I won't be able to explain it to the factory."

"Okay, okay, Uncle Zhao, I will be careful." Zhang Lexing hurriedly agreed, and then impatiently began to open the carton.

The cartons were opened one by one. Zhang Lexing took a look. There were quite a lot of things inside, a square monitor, a floppy drive with colorful apples printed on it, the biggest thing that seemed to be a mainframe, and several boxes of floppy disks. (One box of floppy disks has some words marked on it, which seems to be random software, and the other boxes of floppy disks have nothing marked on them, and they look like blank disks), and a bunch of random materials in English.Zhang Lexing thought for a while, and took out the thing that looked like a mainframe, and found that there was also a colorful apple printed on it, and there were a few words "AppleII" beside it.

"Could this be the legendary Apple II?" Zhang Lexing felt excited, and worked harder to move things out of the box.After connecting the monitor and plugging in the floppy drive, a decent Apple II computer appeared in front of him.

"I remember that the Apple II didn't come to China so early, right? Could it be because my return has had an impact on the world?" Zhang Lexing pondered endlessly: "Whatever, it's better than nothing, at least the Apple II is better than those antiques. Much easier to use."

Zhang Lexing reached out and turned on the power of the Apple II. Since the system floppy disk was not inserted, it quickly entered the BASIC state, and it was still an ultra-green screen.Zhang Lexing tried a few commands casually, and it turned out to be the same as the Apple II in his memory.

Zhang Lexing suddenly became interested. He dug out the random information from the box, looked at it a little, and found that it was quite comprehensive.There are "6502 Assembly Manual", "ROM-BASIC User Guide", "APPLEDOS User Guide", etc., but they are all in English, no wonder they have not been used in the factory.Zhang Lexing suddenly felt how precious it was before he came back to study the Apple II, which gave him a deep understanding of the Apple II's command system. Now, just by looking at the random information, he can fully utilize this Apple II.

He was in a happy mood here, but Uncle Zhao began to get nervous, especially when he saw that Zhang Lexing opened the cover when he installed the floppy drive. broken."

Seeing the computer start up, Uncle Zhao said in surprise: "Le Xing, you are really good at it. You can start the computer with just a few tweaks. Well, when I got it back last time, it was the same screen after startup, but after that It won’t work anymore. Hey, that box is also connected? It turns out that two college students couldn’t make it work for a long time, so you have to be careful.”

"Uncle Zhao is fine, I read the random information carefully." Zhang Lexing said confidently.However, his words seemed to have little effect, and Uncle Zhao was still wandering around with a worried expression on his face.Zhang Lexing took out APPLEDOS from the random software, inserted it into the floppy drive, and restarted the computer. After a while, the system entered the APPLEDOS command line.

"Hey, I don't think I've seen this before." Uncle Zhao leaned over curiously and looked at it carefully.

Zhang Lexing smiled and said, "Uncle Zhao, this is the operating system mentioned in the pile of materials. The one that boots directly into it is called ROM-BASIC. The two functions are different."

"Oh, so that's the case." Uncle Zhao nodded as if he understood something.

Zhang Lexing tried a few operations on the command line, which were similar to what he remembered, and then restarted the computer to enter BASIC, and then switched to the assembly state.Reminiscing while referring to the "6502 Assembly Manual", Zhang Lexing compiled a small test program.After the program starts, a "SYSTEM TESTING..." prompt appears on the green screen, and the test results come out after a while.The following results are displayed on the computer screen:
COMPUTER: APPLE-II
CPUModel: 6502
CPUSPEED: 1MHz
MEMORY (KB): 48
…………

It looks pretty good. For the Apple II at this time, this configuration is already considered good, and it is similar to the Apple II+ in his impression.

Seeing Zhang Lexing's proficient operation, Uncle Zhao was at a loss, not knowing what he was doing, but felt that he seemed to be familiar with this computer, so he couldn't help asking: "Lexing, what are you doing?" ? Looks like you're pretty good at it."

"Oh, Uncle Zhao, I'm testing the computer." Zhang Lexing explained casually, "I read these from random materials."

Of course, this is just Zhang Lexing's excuse, otherwise he would not be able to explain why he is so familiar with this new computer all of a sudden.

"But it's all in foreign language, can you understand it?" Uncle Zhao was still a little surprised.

"Oh, I learned this by myself. It's basically the same." Seeing Uncle Zhao's doubts, Zhang Lexing had no choice but to prevaricate.

"Really, so why haven't I heard of it at all?" Uncle Zhao was still a little puzzled.

"Uncle Zhao, this is my secret. I wanted to show it off in front of my parents, but unfortunately I never had the chance again." Zhang Lexing had no choice but to use his dead parents as a shield, but his eye circles turned red uncontrollably .

Seeing this, Uncle Zhao didn't want to ask any more questions, and the matter was left alone.

This opportunity in front of him is good, Zhang Lexing hopes to find an excuse to come to the computer room to use this Apple II frequently, he began to think about what to do, "It's not good to come directly with Uncle Zhao every day, if the leader sees it, the more times, Uncle Zhao may be criticized, after all, computers are still very rare nowadays. Is there any good way to come to this computer room often without being gossiped?"

Suddenly Zhang Lexing's mind flashed, "Well, since this computer has not been used yet, why don't I make some articles on it. For example, I can make a BASIC user guide or something. I can refer to the random information. Just translate it. The BASIC language on Apple is relatively simple, so it shouldn’t be too difficult. In this way, I only need to write the manual every afternoon, and I can spare the morning to study this computer. This is the best computer I can find so far. Well, maybe if I'm lucky, I can design something."

The next step is easy. Tell Uncle Zhao about the research on the use of Apple computers and the writing of BASIC operation manuals. Although Uncle Zhao hesitated at first—it is probably because he has no confidence in Zhang Lexing, and there is no way for him to be so young—— Fortunately, after Zhang Lexing's constant persuasion and encouragement, and the fact that Uncle Zhao may also want to make some achievements, he finally agreed with his opinion and plans to start tomorrow.

As for the rest of today's time, it was taken for granted by Zhang Lexing for the reason of researching computers.Master, time is precious!

(End of this chapter)