Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 427 Jobs Gates secretly communicated the song

In terms of qualifications in the field of microprocessors, Bill Mensch is definitely a veteran figure. His career in designing CPUs can be traced back to the period when Motorola developed the MC1970 to compete with Intel 8080 in the 6800s.

Because the MC6800 also followed the route of a high-end microprocessor priced in the hundreds of dollars, the R&D team planned to study a low-cost and energy-efficient product, but Motorola management rejected it.

As a result, after the MC6800 was completed, the R&D team split, and some people transferred to MOS Technology to continue their technological dreams, and Bill Mensch was one of them.

MOS Technology was originally based on the opportunity of the second supplier of Texas Instruments calculators, which is somewhat similar to the relationship between AMD and Intel.

As a result, Bill Mensch's team was really tough and successfully launched the MOS 6502, which sold for only $25.

Coincidentally, Intel’s CPU R&D team also got into trouble. Federic Fagin was dissatisfied with Andy Grove’s management philosophy. He left Intel and created the Z8, the performance king of 80-bit CPUs in the commercial market. There is no MOS 6502 on the market, and the two are tied.

These two CPUs just caught up with the key nodes of the second stage of personal computer development, thus replacing Intel's Intel 8080 and Motorola's MC6800 respectively, becoming the most popular microprocessors on the market.

Radio Shack, which has been acquired by Tang Huan, chose Z80 as the CPU of Tangdy Computer TRS-80 at that time.

As for MOS 6502, it is even more straightforward. Because of MOS Technology's poor management and economic crisis, it was directly acquired by Commodore-Commodore, and it became a dedicated CPU for Commodore PET.

Woz took a fancy to the high quality and low price of MOS 6502, so this microprocessor also took the express train of Apple's Apple II.

These three companies led the development of personal computers into a new stage, and the MOS 6502 and Z80 have contributed a lot.

After the turmoil in MOS Technology, the R&D team of MOS 6502 broke up again. Bill Mensch founded the Western Design Center to continue to develop an optimized version of the microprocessor compatible with MOS 6502.

Because Commodore not only produces MOS 6502 through MOS Technology, but also manufactures personal computers by itself, relying on this vertically integrated industrial advantage to squeeze out competitors in terms of price and cost, so manufacturers using MOS 6502 try to source from second suppliers. Channel procurement.For example, Apple and Atari buy MOS 6502 compatible CPUs from Synertek.

Tang Huan is also a large user of MOS 6502. Of course, he will not suffer from Commodore's dumbness. Apart from finding a second supplier with better quality and lower price in Japan, he is also looking for an alternative target in the United States.

The WDC 65C02 designed by Bill Mensch not only eliminated some bugs of MOS 6502, but also further improved performance and reduced power consumption, which won Tang Huan's favor.

The use of Gein's low-power microprocessors is not limited to personal computers and video game consoles, but also extends to a wider range of embedded systems and other fields.

After cooperating for a period of time, Tang Huan decisively won the small company Western Design Center, and commissioned Bill Mensch to develop a 6502-bit CPU compatible with MOS 16. The result was W65C816, which he suggested for Apple IIGS.

At present, W65C816 is also in the sample stage, and there are still some defects waiting to be eliminated.

Apple convened various technical forces to visit, in essence, to coordinate and solve these problems.

The CPU of the Apple IIGS is a 16-bit W65C816 with a memory capacity of 256 KB.

Due to the use of the standard ISA bus of Fangyuan computer, Apple IIGS can directly use the expansion card functions on the Fangyuan computer platform, such as CD-ROM/CD-R drive, Zip drive, Sony 3.5-inch floppy disk drive, Epson printer, Seagate hard disk, 3COM External devices such as network cards, sound cards, modems, etc. all have opportunities to show their skills.

Invisibly, the development progress of Apple IIGS will also be accelerated a lot.

After discussing the issue almost, when everyone started to eat, Woz talked to Tang Huan about the music festival with great interest, "Tang, you really managed to connect with the musicians from the Soviet Union, then Our festival will definitely be more fun."

For this music festival, Tang Huan and Woz jointly invested 1500 million US dollars, which can definitely be called a heavy investment. It can be said that it is for their own personal hobbies, and they have performed the prodigal to a new height.

But having said that, how could the event jointly organized by the two billionaires be so shabby.

At the beginning, Woz was just for the purpose of playing, but Tang Huan felt that with the energy of the two of them, this event could be operated as a permanent symbolic cultural feast in the San Francisco area every year.

This goal moved Woz at the time. After all, if a person has money, he wants to have a name. This is a manifestation of the value of life.

There is no doubt that this kind of activity will be very popular no matter where it is. Not only will the funds be paid, but it will also increase local attention and stimulate economic development. It can be said that everyone is happy, so San Francisco officials did not hesitate to invest resources to cooperate. , the media are even more enthusiastically hyping it, and it will officially start next month.

Since the goal is to build it into an annual cultural event, it is very worthwhile to invest more funds in the first session and do some basic work well.

Woz spends money mainly for personal interest and fame, while Tang Huan has more goals.

First of all, Tang Huan will use the gimmick of combining technology and art to demonstrate the audio processing capabilities of Fangyuan Computer. At that time, the MIDI-driven electronic musical instrument will be a highlight that attracts people's attention.

Secondly, in the name of DreamWorks, Tang Huan invited some people from the Asian Chinese music scene to attend this event, which can be regarded as exchange and learning.Of course, Tang Huan had to pay for this expense himself.

Seeing Tang Huan and Woz spend a lot of money and talk high-spiritedly, while entering the industry earlier but respecting Gates who is the last, I can't help but feel a little sour.

It's hard to be a younger brother, so Gates found an excuse, left the dinner table, went out to get some air, and didn't want to meet Jobs who seemed to come here on purpose. The other party asked pointedly, "The BASIC of Apple IIGS The business, have you already won it?"

"Yes." Gates, who knew Jobs' moody temperament well, nodded cautiously.

"It seems that you are very satisfied with getting such a trivial business, and you seem to be a little bit happy." Jobs teased unceremoniously.

"This business shouldn't be small." Gates, who was ridiculed and felt a little inexplicable, explained patiently: "According to the design goal of Apple IIGS, it will introduce the Apple II series of personal computers from the era of 8-bit CPUs to 16-bit CPUs. In the era of the [-]-bit CPU, it became the successor of the Apple IIe, and the future sales are very optimistic."

"Then let me ask you, when will the Apple IIGS be available?" Jobs snorted, not caring about Gates' explanation at all.

"According to the plan, next year." Gates answered honestly.

"Next year? Next year, the Lisa computer will come out, and my MAC will also be on stage." Jobs muttered disdainfully, "I don't know what Mike and the others think, but the Apple II is clearly an upcoming product. What is outdated, why do you still need to devote resources to repair and upgrade it? It’s better to transfer it to the MAC project team.”

The shrewd Gates finally understood what was going on. It turned out that Jobs, the president of Apple, didn't want to see his next-generation Apple II. This is really weird.

"It should be that the consumer group that the product is facing is different." Gates, who didn't want to cause unnecessary trouble, replied vaguely and casually.

"Duplicate investment, waste of resources." After Jobs finished his evaluation without any scruples, he stared at Gates and said, "What's the point of developing BASIC for Apple IIGS? Let's go, I will lead you to open your eyes."

Hearing this, Gates, who had already reached an instinctive level of stealing a teacher, could not help but feel moved. He quickly followed in Jobs' footsteps and tentatively asked, "Where are we going?"

"When you arrive, you will know." Jobs raised his head and sold a trick.

"Just pretend, besides the MAC project, what else do you have to show me? I really think you are the only one who is smart." Gates could not help but slander.

……

As Gates guessed, Jobs led him into the closely guarded MAC project team.

"Close your eyes, take a few deep breaths, and get ready to witness the miracle I'll show you." Jobs ordered mysteriously.

Enduring the extreme discomfort in his heart, Gates did it again, and then looked at the computer monitor in the direction of Jobs' finger.

The color of the screen is white with black text, which is very close to what books look like in reality, but it seems a little dazzling.

Above is a document with a slider on the edge. Drag this thing with the mouse, and the lines of text will move smoothly in the vertical direction. The refresh speed is very fast, and the naked eye can hardly feel the flicker and pause.

This display method is quite different from the technical methods commonly used nowadays.When there are a lot of documents to be processed, the latter are all displayed in split screens, and you need to press the page turning key once to switch the content of each page.

It is undeniable that the display method of MAC is closer to the natural form in real life, which is definitely a pioneering work.

"This is just one of the many features of MAC." Seeing the surprised look on Gates' face, Jobs smiled with satisfaction, "This is an epoch-making product, what do you think?"

Gates hesitated for a moment, but nodded, agreeing with Jobs' statement.

In fact, Gates stole a lesson from Tang Huan, which really opened up a lot of horizons. He has already understood concepts such as graphical user interface.

At this stage, Zheru's various software has added many graphical interface elements.Its commercial promotion slogan in the market is "menu-driven".

As the name implies, the user does not need to memorize too many obscure DOS commands, and then type the keyboard to send them to the CPU for execution, but complete the daily work through the cooperation of the mouse, menus, and parameters.

Compared with the previous all-DOS command-driven computer operation, menu-driven is much more visual and labor-saving. It is very popular with users and has become a major feature of the Fangyuan computer platform.

But this is not really a graphical user interface, the "Xerox Star" released by PARC last year is the real example.

On the Fangyuan personal computer platform, the operating system FreeDOS itself does not provide a graphical user interface mechanism from the inside to the outside. The friendly interface that the user sees is completed by each program independently. A Shell provided by FreeDOS——help command execution The shell program - File Explorer, is the most famous one.

Of course, these programs will use a public function library provided by FreeDOS.

As for the more advanced product - Fangyuan Personal Workstation, the operating system used by it, Vientiane, provides some interface programs that are closer to the graphical user interface effect of "Xerox Star".

Gates has reason to believe that Zheru must also be researching GUIs, but due to the current hardware performance, he has been acting conservatively.

Because Charles Simeone made no secret of his vigilance, Gates' plan to steal his teacher was repeatedly blocked, and naturally he was unable to pry into further information.

The MAC in front of him can be said to have demonstrated to Gates vividly, and guided him to a clear direction for the development of a graphical user interface.

In the field of innovation, Gates' performance from 0 to 1 is often lackluster; but from 1 to the next thing is his specialty.

While thinking about whether he would also like to do a GUI project, Gates suddenly heard Jobs say, "Are you willing to develop software on such a great personal computer platform?"

"Of course it's a wish." Gates nodded with a smile.

"Well, I'll give you such an opportunity." Jobs bewitched condescendingly, "I'll ask Microsoft to develop software such as spreadsheets, word processing, and databases for MAC."

(End of this chapter)