Rebirth of the Tech Madman

After listening to Spielberg's reminder, Tang Huan nodded thoughtfully. :3wし

Naturally, his subordinates will not feel that the money is too much to burn, thinking that their side has earned too much in Hollywood this year, so they consider the feelings of others; The opinions expressed from the perspectives of the three parties can more objectively reflect the subtle changes in the mentality of the outside world.

This year's summer, Lianmei and MGM's performances, Paramount's accompanying run, and other companies' onlookers just show that the overall development of Hollywood has fallen to a low level compared to decades of glory. to what extent.

Speaking of this, Tang Huan emphasized his tone, But precisely because of this, the American film industry may have hit the bottom and will usher in a new opportunity for development. Las Vegas gambling tycoon Kirk Kerkorian, Coca-Cola's Roberto Gosida, and Warner's Steve Ross should all have seen the signs of this, and that's why they made so many names successively.

Tang Huan looked at Spielberg and laughed, I have only been in Hollywood for a few years. Even if I want to monopolize, do I have the capital? The relationship between Coca-Cola Company can only be said to be a coincidence, who let me, an upstart in Silicon Valley, give me a lot of money. Of course, due to the reason of film copyright, I do have a little idea about Columbia Pictures. You know, now The business of video recorders and videotapes is not just booming.

It can only be said that you are too discerning in investment, and the resulting trend of latecomers and first comers has made some old forces fearful. The benefits obtained from Tang Huan. Spielberg, who has cooperated with far more film companies than any one before, sincerely complimented: Now, your title of lucky man in Hollywood has been confirmed.

It doesn't matter if you are an upstart in Silicon Valley or a lucky person in Hollywood. The sourness in it is too obvious, and it doesn't reflect your recognition of my personal ability and hard work. Tang Huan sighed, Maybe my rise is really too fast. , There are too many factors that make people feel lucky.”

Seeing the lonely expression on Tang Huan's face, Spielberg sincerely comforted him: Many people have only seen the scenery of Silicon Valley One, but they don't understand you, a trapeze. It's hard to travel frequently around the world. Perhaps human beings Society is inherently this complicated, and I often encounter such distress.”

Although there was no Erguotou or peanuts, there was red wine. Tang Huan and Spielberg, the confidantes, had a drink.

...

It is confirmed from Spielberg that Warner is still tirelessly digging the pit of et aliens for himself. Tang Huan suppressed the depression in his heart, and waited for the good show to start in a few months.

As for the DOJ's antitrust investigation,

Naturally, there will be subordinates to deal with those investigators. If he is serious, he will be called a loser.

Tang Huan used the spare time to accompany Intel's Andy Grove and re-Gordon Moore, the inventor of Moore's Law, to visit Zheru R\u0026D Center. The intel80286 prototype of the Intel cpu branch of the third-generation Fangyuan personal computer.

This year, the Japanese semiconductor manufacturers jointly launched a price war against their American counterparts, and Intel complained a lot. It should have belonged to the main product on the market - 64kb DRAM chip, the price has dropped from tens of dollars all the way. It seems that it is going straight to the single digits.

Although Commodore and Texas Instruments, which are affiliated to Commodore, have also been hit, they have all directly entered the personal computer industry, taking advantage of this vertically integrated industry. Not only do they not have to worry about the sales of the chips they produce, but they also have the energy to fight a price war with each other in the field of low-end personal computers. Try to kick the opponent out.

Intel does not have this convenience, in order to win the trust of customers. It has set a rule for itself - the company's business does not enter the field of competition with customers.

In other words, Intel, which produces semiconductor memory chips and microprocessors, will not enter the field of computer manufacturing.

As a result, until now, the main business on which it relies for survival-the thigh of memory, has been forcibly crippled by the partnership of Japanese semiconductor manufacturers, but the business of microprocessors is still in order.

In order to compete with Motorola's quasi-32-bit microprocessor, Intel's process of upgrading its own cpu product line from intel8086 to intel80286 can be described as painstaking, adding features that support error handling, virtual memory, and so on.

After the intel80286 was officially launched on the market at the beginning of this year, Intel has always hoped that this cpu can quickly enter the main box of personal computers, but there are very few responders.

Fortunately, Fangyuan Computer and ibm- gave a positive attitude and will develop a personal computer based on intel80286.

In view of the fact that ibm- only uses the shrunken version of intel8086, intel8086, and the fact that the technology and market are weaker than Fangyuan computer, Intel pays more attention to the performance of Fangyuan computer.

The fact is also true, Tang Huan's speed is much faster than that of IBM, and it took about half a year to come up with a prototype of the intel80286, which undoubtedly gave a ray of golden sunshine to Intel, which felt haze above its head.

When Tang Huan, Andy Grove, and Gordon Moore walked into the meeting room, the demonstrator was running the new game Monopoly launched by EA on the personal computer platform on the intel80286 prototype, which made the two Intel bigwigs Suddenly, a thought flashed in my mind, Is the maturity of the intel80286 prototype already so high?

You know, running this type of video game is a test of the all-round capabilities of a personal computer.

When they saw the scene where the characters entered the simulated stock market trading at a meeting in the game, Andy Grove and Gordon Moore glanced at each other, suddenly realized that it would be a few months. Fangyuan Computer is about to go on the market, and of course new products are needed to add to the fun.

These irrelevant thoughts quickly passed by, and Andy Grove and Gordon Moore were firmly attracted by the powerful performance displayed by the intel80286 prototype.

Designed by Woz, it really shines in terms of display functions, but there are still many shortcomings. In addition, the traces of his personal skills are too obvious, which limits the possibility of it becoming a standard.

Due to the various hardware standards of personal computers at the present stage, the realization methods of display functions are also correspondingly varied.

For example, the display standard adopted by ibm at the beginning is called r-monochrome display adapter, or mda, which supports a resolution of up to 720x350, and can display 80 lines x 25 columns of text on one screen. It is twice as many as the 40 rows x 25 columns of the era.

However, mda has an obvious shortcoming, that is, it does not have the ability to draw, and it is suddenly compared by its peers.

For example, the Hercules graphics card, a monochrome graphics card developed by the American Hercules Company, supports a resolution of 720x348. Clear text and graphics can be displayed.

It not only provides the function of displaying graphics with higher resolution at a relatively cheap price, but also opens up the underlying interface, allowing users to play the functions of the hardware more flexibly, which is very beneficial to game development.

But success is also Xiao He, failure is Xiao He, this low-level method is very difficult to master, especially the resolution of 720x348 is too special, and it is quite different from the common industry standards of 640x480, 640x350, and 640x200.

In order to make their own ibm- have the ability to draw. Big Blue quickly launched the r-color graphics adapter or cga.

As the name suggests, cga is the first graphics card on ibm- that supports color.

Its standard is to provide two standard text display modes: 40 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors and 80 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors; and two common graphic display modes: 320 rows x 200 columns x 4 colors and 640 rows x 200 columns x 2 colors.

Of course. Game programmers can also use special techniques to simulate and display more colors on the cga.

It has to be said that Big Blue's conservative style has also been fully demonstrated in product design. It thinks that the cga launched in line with the current situation has not actually kept up with the changes in the personal computer market.

Tang Huan's display implementation method designed for Fangyuan Computer is called—Video Graphics Standard, or vgs.

The first generation of Fangyuan computers used vgs version 10. The highest supported resolution is 640x350, and 4 colors can be displayed in this mode.

As for text mode. There are also two types, which are 80 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors. And 40 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors.

The second-generation Fangyuan computer uses vgs version 15, supports a maximum resolution of 640x480, and can display 8 colors in this mode.

In terms of text mode, version 15 of vgs is the same as version 10, 80 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors, and 40 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors, but there is an enhancement, that is, it also supports 4 background colors for text.

In addition, vgs has a complete set of assembly language function interface for more precise control by programmers.

Compatible machine manufacturers of Fangyuan Computer will make various trade-offs in the public standards of Fangyuan Computer, but they will basically not shrink on vgs.

This makes the display function of Fangyuan Computer significantly better than its competitors, plus it has a set of system call interfaces, which in turn attracts more and more developers to develop games on this platform.

The three generations of Fangyuan computers use vgs version 20, which supports a maximum resolution of 640x480, and can display 16 colors in this mode.

In terms of text mode, in addition to 80 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors and 40 rows x 25 columns x 16 colors, there are 8 background colors for text.

It is worth noting that vgs version 20 can display 256 colors in 320x200 mode.

Of course, the entire vgs standard is backward compatible, and supports drawing and resolution in an analog way.

It can be said that the graphics cards used by the third-generation Fangyuan computers began to have the shadow of personal computer graphics cards in the original time and space, and the heat generation soared, because it used the 256kb video memory produced by the French fab1 semiconductor factory and the display core with a running frequency of 25mhz .

Tang Huan estimated that when the standards of the third-generation Fangyuan computers are opened to compatible manufacturers, the display part is likely to be reduced.

In addition to using a standard graphics card, this intel80286 prototype has a cpu operating frequency of 125mhz, a memory of 1mb, and a hard disk of 20mb, which undoubtedly pushes the performance of mainstream personal computers to a new level.

Comparing the running effect of the game Monopoly with the intel8086 second-generation Fangyuan computer of the same Intel microprocessor series as a reference, we can see the obvious gap.

Next, the demonstration content is to run two programs at the same time - a spreadsheet and a word processing, which is obviously showing the characteristics of the intel80286 in terms of multitasking support, which is implemented by the latest version of the operating system.

Among the current personal computer products, only the high-end models of Fangyuan Computer support multitasking, and those products adopt Motorola microprocessors.

From this point of view alone, Intel and Motorola's cpu competed for judgment, which made Intel, which has always been technologically advanced as its selling point, worry about it for a long time.

Well now, after l80286 is launched, the two sides will be considered a tie.

In fact, this multitasking

Among the current personal computer products, only the high-end models of Fangyuan Computer support multitasking, and those products adopt Motorola microprocessors.

From this point of view alone, Intel and Motorola's cpu competed for judgment, which made Intel, which has always been technologically advanced as its selling point, worry about it for a long time.

Well now, after l80286 is launched, the two sides will be considered a tie.

In fact, this multitasking (to be continued)

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