manynovel #461 - Harvest Days
#461 - Harvest Days
Ren Zhong came and went in a hurry, but he became the most exciting scene of the Global Computer Conference.
Ren Zhong's bold prediction of the "Internet" prospect made every true computer expert yearn for it. Imagine if most people in the world could have a personal computer, and then these computers could be interconnected through a "network" to conduct real-time communication of text, voice, and even images. That would be as fascinating as a science fiction world.
Although it sounds like a fantasy, personal computers have already begun to appear today, and there is also the RS232 interface protocol for connecting other devices, which can connect multiple devices to a personal computer. Even two computers can communicate with each other through this protocol.
In the prospect of Dongda's personal computer network connection scheme, they plan to develop a TCP/IP protocol specifically for the interconnection of computers. This connection also requires the implementation of a hardware called "network adapter". According to the plan, they will achieve the interconnection of personal computers in a local area in about two years!
Therefore, Ren Zhong's vision and prediction are not wild fantasies, but a new research and development direction that the computer industry in Dongda has already begun to pursue!
No attending representative dared to ignore such a prediction.
Some of them have already begun to imagine based on Ren Zhong's prediction. If the interconnection of personal computers can be realized, it will be a completely different subversion for the entire world!
Many industries and products will disappear, and many new products and services will be born at the same time!
In this regard, if they can keep up with Ren Zhong's predictive thinking, they will not lose their direction in the future wave of technological development.
Of course, not every representative has confidence in Ren Zhong's prediction. In their minds, they cannot imagine when the technology to connect every computer in the world can be realized, and what kind of technology will be used to connect them.
Currently, what can connect the world is only satellite communication, which has achieved global coverage of satellite signals. However, from a technical level, satellite transmission is mainly a one-way mode. In terms of satellite relay, currently only microwave and shortwave methods are used to broadcast image and sound information, but in terms of image transmission, currently only one-way broadcasting can be achieved.
As for wired methods, what can be transmitted now is voice and telegraph.
When and by what means computer information will be used to realize complex information, most technicians still cannot find the direction.
After all, this Bright Sword world has only just reached the technical level of the 1960s in the main world. Many technologies are still forcibly stuffed in by Ren Zhong after importing them from the main world.
A lot of theoretical accumulation has now become a situation where engineering applications start first, and then lessons are made up later.
Ren Zhong has promoted the development of integrated circuits by several years through forced growth at Dongda, and has realized the first generation of integrated circuit computers in advance, starting the evolution of personal computers more than ten years ahead of schedule.
Under such an abnormal development situation, it is very normal for some people not to understand.
Not so many technical geniuses in this world have the ability to see through the future.
Fortunately, at this conference, Ren Zhong did not need to face anyone's doubts. After he simply described the correct prospects, he left the venue directly.
For him, he no longer needs to build relationships with anyone.
Out of instinctive caution, Ren Zhong rarely appears in public.
Because if Ren Zhong showed his face like this in Dongda, he would likely face a group of people's pilgrimage-like respect. Ren Zhong does not want and does not like this feeling.
He has self-awareness, but it is only because he is standing in the middle of two worlds that he has become a technical porter across two worlds.
This is not his ability, this is just his responsibility.
It is a natural mission to use the technology of the main world to help the rise of Dongda in the Bright Sword world.
The meeting continued. After Ren Zhong's speech looked forward to the future, it directly entered the overall architecture introduction of personal computers.
Through this concise training, the personnel who are preparing to carry out motherboard design in the future will have a general understanding of the design. How they will read the data, how to choose the direction of improvement and how to debug, these cannot be easily mastered by just looking at the data.
Especially in terms of debugging, the current data only gives a popular and basic content. Many things cannot be fully reflected in the data at all.
More importantly, everyone understands the principle of teaching apprentices starving the master. In these materials, only the most basic parts are given now. Dongda's experienced masters also do not unconditionally share many engineering experiences about reliability and long-term stable operation encountered in the research and development process.
However, for the attending representatives, Dongda completely gave the main content of personal computer hardware and software design, and explained how to design and test a personal computer.
Dongda's computer industry has indeed released great sincerity, and even open-sourced the very critical motherboard design of a personal computer, not only giving reference materials, but also giving a fairly in-depth technical explanation at the meeting. Experts who have a deeper understanding of computer or electronic product hardware design basically understand the general idea of motherboard design after listening to it. After they get the BIOS interface data and the specification of the relevant chip interface, they can completely design a new motherboard under the guidance of the reference design!
This means that Dongda's open personal computer aspect gives everyone a very large degree of freedom in terms of the future computer size and shape design.
The design of the motherboard has a very large impact on the shape of the computer. Whether the designed product will be round or square, and whether the case will be horizontal or vertical desktop shape, these are all freedoms for everyone.
If the explanation in the morning was more inclined to hardware design, then the afternoon mainly promoted the technology of software design.
In terms of content, it mainly focuses on two major contents: peripheral driver design and third-party software application development. The course also gives demonstrations in a simple and easy-to-understand way, demonstrating the keyboard interaction protocol and driver. Taking the keyboard as a peripheral, it completely demonstrates how the peripheral interacts with the computer. For customers who need to access peripherals such as fax machines and printers, this demonstration has extremely strong reference value.
After a day's meeting, each representative seemed to be infused with magic, and had a truly complete image of developing a personal computer.
From the perspective of these representatives, Dongda's technology openness was comprehensive and genuine. Except for a few key components like the CPU, BIOS, core operating system, memory, and floppy disk drive, the technology for the remaining parts was given very thoroughly. This included the development of motherboards and computer applications, providing a very large space for future compatible machine developers.
Considering that these computers were running locally, they couldn't see any opportunity for Dongda to leave backdoors to control these computers.
Because of this application development model, no one could predict the future direction of personal computer applications.
In this way, for a computer, tampering with the operating system would only cause the machine to crash and serve no other purpose.
After all, personal computers at this time weren't yet connected through the internet as Ren Zhong had described in his blueprint.
As a result, the original concerns about Dongda controlling personal computers gradually faded away as the degree of technology openness increased.
The first day of the conference left these representatives very excited, and almost no one was absent from the group discussions over the next three days.
The battlefield had shifted to the exhibition hall.
During the group technical exchanges, many of Dongda's various subsystems or products were brought out for display and teaching.
The heads of these various technical projects hosted the technical exchanges. Through the exhibition of Dongda's computer-related products and the group technical exchanges, these products and subsystems received a very enthusiastic response from the participating representatives from various countries.
Orders for the 8080 core CPU exceeded 100,000 units on the first day!
As for Dongda's computer motherboards, 100,000 sets were also directly ordered. For the two major components of the first generation of personal computers, manufacturers unanimously chose to import them as complete sets.
Not only that, but memory, floppy disks, and operating systems were also imported.
In terms of applications, 50,000 sets of the office suite were pre-ordered, while only 10,000 sets of the dBase database suite were ordered.
Of course, the major importers were mainly Vision Company and GoldenStar, the seed players of the Qianlong Project, who were preparing to make a big splash in the consumer-grade personal computer market.
They took up 80% of the share, preparing to import these products and combine them with their own manufactured chassis and televisions to directly form products for sale.
Their goal was very clear: to capture the first wave of high-end consumer-grade personal computer users!
They unswervingly followed the path of trade, industry, and technology for the great powers.
These were all things that were planned, but after the Global Computer Conference, their choices became logical, and it had nothing to do with the two founders.
The organizers of this event and the attendees were all domestic professional managers and technical experts, which allowed the two founders to promote this event without any risk.
From a commercial point of view, at this stage, when everyone lacks technical capabilities, directly importing Dongda's complete solutions and hardware subsystems is the least risky way to assemble a personal computer.
After all, after conducting research and matching on some peripheral small components, they can start to launch products on a large scale in 3-6 months.
Such a fast pace is very beneficial for seizing market opportunities.
If the focus is on capturing the consumer market, this strategy is undoubtedly problem-free.
Therefore, when these two leading companies in their respective regions placed large orders, no manufacturers had any doubts about it.
These are leaders in the electronics market, and it is perfectly normal for them to take the lead in the early personal computer market.
Moreover, the external display for these personal computers is mainly based on televisions, which further highlights their cost-effectiveness.
According to their plan, the first batch of consumer-grade personal computers will undoubtedly be aimed at television users.
Companies like MBI tend to accumulate technology first and then see what happens. They purchased hundreds of sets of components, mainly for disassembly, research, and matching with their own product testing experiments.
From their layout, they want to customize a new personal computer product starting from the motherboard.
Moreover, in terms of application software, they not only want an office software suite, but they also want to see if some commercial software can be ported to personal computers, thereby attracting those commercial customers who currently need to purchase expensive transistor computers, allowing these high-value commercial customers to achieve a personal computer replacement for transistor computers!
This is their wishful thinking. If personal computers can replace the transistor computers for commercial users who currently spend tens of thousands of dollars, then MBI will have found a new commercial market for personal computers. In this way, while others sell personal computers for over a thousand dollars, MBI can sell them for tens of thousands of dollars by adding software on top of the hardware's thousand-dollar base!
Of course, this is euphemistically called software customization services.
MBI is not one of those small manufacturer customers. It does not need or bother to compete with them in the low-level price war for the highly homogeneous home market.
It is foreseeable that a large number of compatible machines will appear in the future market, many of which are low-level products assembled with Dongda's core components. Their sources of supply are the same, and the costs are basically the same. In the future, the competition will be about reducing channel costs and reducing after-sales costs.
Since everyone can see the opponent's cards, basically the worst-case scenario of mutual destruction will occur during the price war.
MBI doesn't want to do this kind of thing.
Vision Company does not know now that their secretly envisioned first competitor, MBI, has chosen to compete in a differentiated way.
They have withdrawn from the competition in the home personal computer compatible machine market and are aiming at commercial customers, brewing a big move.
However, for Vision, no matter how MBI responds, their task is to launch their own brand of personal computers to the market as soon as possible. Therefore, after placing the order, they took hundreds of samples back to North America in a hurry, preparing to concentrate all their efforts on completing the design of the first assembled computer.
Of course, while the standard is open, Dongda has never said that the licensing of related patents is free. Therefore, during the first Global Computer Conference, manufacturers who signed contracts to import Dongda's core components to develop compatible machine businesses signed a large number of patent licensing agreements with Dongda's IT Technology Research Center.
According to the requirements of the agreement, Dongda's software authorization and patent authorization are not exclusive. For some companies that require regional exclusivity in an attempt to monopolize the market, Dongda chose to refuse.
This time, Dongda's intention in the computer field is to promote personal computers globally. Regional monopolies are not conducive to the promotion of personal computer standards, so they are not allowed.
Therefore, after a fierce bargaining process, customers who decided to enter the personal computer market on the spot signed patent licensing agreements with Dongda, confirming the standard of charging $10 per computer to obtain the usage authorization for a package of personal computer software and hardware patents.
Dongda's computer business ushered in its first harvest day.