Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 442 The Great Chaos in the PC Industry

From a certain perspective, COMDEX, which was born specifically for computers, now has some meaning as an industry benchmark.It is like a magnet, attracting individuals and companies to come over and showcase their technologies and products on this platform.

In other words, if someone has never participated in COMDEX, he will be embarrassed to say that he is a member of the IT industry.

The popularity of COMDEX can be seen in the fact that the number of exhibitors has increased from a few hundred in the first session to thousands now, and the total flow of visitors has increased from [-] to [-] people per day.

Among them, leading companies in the industry that can provide terminal products with revolutionary applications, such as Zheru, Fangyuan Computer, and EA, have played a role that cannot be ignored in gathering popularity.

The initiator of COMDEX, Sheldon Adelson, is well aware of Tang Huan's role, so he has been working hard to maintain the friendship between the two parties, and even the summary information of the exhibitors is sent over as quickly and completely as possible.

"Two more guys have emerged who can dominate an era." When Tang Huan saw the names of Compaq and Lotus for the first time, he began to mutter to himself.

……

This year’s autumn COMDEX opens in Las Vegas on November 11th.

While the influential figures in the industry talk about the development of the industry, they often walk around each other or meet by chance. For example, Tang Huan and Don Esterlich met again.

As 5.25-inch personal computer hard drives became more and more popular among users, the IBM-PC department did not respond as slowly as the head office. It quickly launched a new model IBM-PC/XT based on the IBM-PC, with 10 MB capacity Seagate hard drive, while the basic memory capacity is increased to 128 KB.

The IBM-PC/XT with the product model number 5160 is just an enhancement of the IBM-PC with the product model number 5150. Computers have made major functional innovations in multimedia, networking and other aspects.

If you have to compare new technologies and product release capabilities, then the prototype XT/370 produced by the IBM-PC department is barely a gimmick.

On the basis of XT, it provides IBM mainframe System/370 terminal emulation function, and the hardware implementation mainly depends on the expansion card equipped with two Motorola microprocessors MC68000.

I just don’t know if Liu Ogbrecht, who was once the chief designer of IBM-PC, has contributed to these products.

After seeing Don Esterlich, Tang Huan said straight to the point: "Competition between IBM-PC and Fangyuan Computer is competition, but some technical standards are best achieved in the industry, which is beneficial to everyone, such as LAN technology. 3COM’s Ethernet specification is of great use.”

"IBM has its own excellent and mature network technology - Token Ring Network. Judging from the data transmission rate alone, because it has no transmission conflicts, a 4M Token Ring network can be compared with a 10M Ethernet is equivalent, so it can be seen that Ethernet is not competitive at all." Don Estridge replied lightly.

More than two months ago, the revelation of Liu Gebrecht brought huge shocks to the IBM-PC department.

Until now, Don Estridge hadn't picked a successor for the chief engineer. He was exhausted physically and mentally, and even talking with Tang Huan at this time, he didn't have any interest in confronting Tang Huan.

"The application environment of the token ring network is too idealized. Network nodes such as mainframes and minicomputers will not cause obvious problems due to their closed system, but personal computers are not suitable. Openness is its biggest advantage." Characteristics.”

Speaking of this, Tang Huan smiled slightly, "Such a complex network environment is similar to a human society with three religions and nine streams, counting on each network node to return it when it is used up, instead of selfishly occupying the network of tokens all the time. The only credential for resource control is not realistic."

After listening to Tang Huan's analysis, Don Estridge's expression changed, but he shook his head in the end, "Perhaps what you said is somewhat reasonable, but IBM is enough to form a line of its own, using strong technical strength to deal with complex Application Environment."

Although the competition between Fangyuan Computer and IBM started from the personal computer market and gradually expanded to the field of enterprise applications, as far as Don Estridge is concerned, the scope of confrontation between him and Tang Huan is limited to between IBM-PC and Fangyuan Personal Computer .

Moreover, Don Estrich was just an IBM department executive, far less intense than Tang Huan and Steve Ross, who had conflicts at the boss level of the company, so much so that they were prejudiced against each other.

Therefore, Don Estridge listened patiently to Tang Huan's words.

But this also invisibly made Don Estridge a bit shorter when facing Tang Huan, and he was always a little weaker when talking.

Just like the issue of technical standards for personal computer LAN, how could Don Estridge have the capital to give up IBM's ready-made token ring network as easily as Tang Huan did? cringe.

Seeing this scene, Tang Huan couldn't help feeling a little disappointed.The network is a big proposition, and it must be managed by as many people as possible, but it is obvious that Don Esterlich has not yet understood the mystery.

At this time, they wandered to a very lively booth, and the words "Compaq portable computers are [-]% compatible with IBM-PC" greeted them, which was very eye-catching, but for the IBM-PC group, it was a bit dazzling.

Don Estridge stared at the 9-inch monitor of the Compaq portable computer, which showed the correct running results of the famous software on the IBM-PC platform, indicating that this product was really [-]% compatible with IBM-PC, which made His face suddenly became ugly.

The reason why Don Estridge actively promoted the disclosure of the IBM-PC specification was because he wanted to attract more third-party manufacturers to develop value-added products such as function expansion cards for the IBM-PC platform, so as to catch up. Leading Fangyuan personal computer, instead of encouraging others to develop IBM-PC compatible machines.

Otherwise, Don Estridge wouldn't hold the BIOS, which he regards as the core technology, in his hands and keep it secret.

Taking a step back, even though the IBM-PC is currently inferior to Fangyuan PCs in terms of market position, after all, the meat is rotten in the same pot, and its hardware revenue is completely owned by Big Blue, but now it suddenly pops up An IBM-PC compatible for a slice of the pie.

What the hell is this Compaq computer?

How does it achieve the so-called [-]% compatibility?
[-]% cracked the BIOS is almost the same.

Don Estrich made a gesture, gritted his teeth and ordered the subordinates accompanying him, "Go and find out the details of this Compaq computer. We have not issued any authorization related to BIOS at all. They are trying to secretly use it on us." You suck, do you think IBM doesn’t have a lawyer?”

Seeing that Don Estridge was so angry, Tang Huan shook his head, there was no way to continue the topic, and it was useless to stay longer, so he turned and left.

As for the Compaq portable computer, Tang Huan, relying on his own technical background, can understand at a glance that the BIOS of IBM-PC has been thoroughly studied by others.For more detailed information, let the subordinates collect it.

Now that I have seen Compaq Computer, the next stop is of course to look at Lotus Software.When Tang Huan arrived at his booth, he found that it was also very lively, and there was a circle of people in the industry - Charles Simeone, Gates, Dan Bricklin and so on.

"The person who is speaking is called Mitchell Kapoor, the founder of this Lotus company. The spreadsheet software Lotus1-2-3 they developed looks very good, and they are also very confident. The market is still It didn’t do much, so I invested 100 million dollars in advertising.” Charles Simeone introduced in a low voice.

"This Mitchell Kapoor is really uncommonly confident." Tang Huan nodded slightly, turned his gaze, and saw that Gates was as pale as Don Estridge just now.

"What happened to Gates?" Tang Huan asked casually.

"Lotus1-2-3 is implemented in assembly language, coupled with reasonable algorithms, the operating efficiency is very outstanding, and even our CGrid is inferior in some cases, such as VisiCalc, MultiPlan, SuperGrid, etc. on the IBM-PC platform The same kind of spreadsheet software, etc., is naturally more stressful."

Having said this, the serious-looking Charles Simonyi showed a smile in his eyes, "Microsoft's MultiPlan is the most troublesome. It can only support a maximum memory capacity of 256 KB, while Lotus1-2-3 not only supports larger memory , the operating efficiency has been further improved, and Microsoft's MultiPlan has been driven to a dead end."

Following Charles Simeone's explanation, Tang Huan came to understand that the IBM-PCs placed on the Lotus Software booth represented the use environments with memory capacities of 64 KB, 128 KB, 256 KB, and 512 KB, respectively.And the same version of Lotus1-2-3, when processing the same data files, with the increase of the memory, its running speed is improved, which can be compared at once.

Tang Huan couldn't help raising his eyebrows as he looked at Mitchell Kapoor who was happily explaining Lotus 1-2-3. It seemed that the real chaos in the PC industry was about to begin.

Tang Huan was thinking about what kind of changes would be brought about by the appearance of Compaq and Lotus, when he saw a subordinate rushing over to report in a hurry: "Our booth has been disrupted, and the demonstration system cannot operate normally."

(End of this chapter)