slept until dawn, and the next day Li Yixuan came to the company in good spirits and entered the technical department, and the workbench was already full of various spare parts bought from the market. Two robotics engineers are preparing for the prototype tape-out of the motherboard.

It was not difficult to tape out the motherboard, so one engineer was responsible for solving it, and the other was called over by Li Yixuan.

To solve the hardware problem, it is also necessary to solve the operating system problem, and the current personal computer still uses the CP/M system, which was famous before the birth of DOS.

The operating software has a capacity of only 86K, but it's not really an operating system, so it's more appropriate to call it a resource management scheduler.

Because the current memory chip capacity is too low, and there is no hard disk, it is impossible to install hard disks, in order to save costs, it is impossible to pile chips on the motherboard, after all, it is not an arcade machine. Therefore, the graphical operating system can only be temporarily abandoned. When the memory capacity comes up later, it's not too late to get on the graphics operating system.

Li Yixuan carefully analyzed the source code of CP/M, and found that this simple to the extreme operating system, there is no application compatibility problem at all, as long as it is installed, almost any application can run on it, only after the birth of DOS, the application software can only be written according to the specifications of DOS The application software can run on it. If the application is not written according to the specifications of DOS, the application will not work.

Based on the characteristics of CP/M, Li Yixuan decided to rewrite a resource management scheduler, a DOS-like microsystem that can be fully compatible with CP/M.

It only took a few simple strokes to set the basic architecture of the operating system. According to the technical manual of the 6502CPU released by MOS, Li Yixuan quickly used the keyboard with both hands to input a section of the program, the program is not large, only 112K, and only 86K after optimization and compression, but it is more complete than the CP/M system.

Asked engineers to design an interface for the system, Li Yixuan began another task, developing the first computer application software.

Application software is the soul of the computer, and without the application, the computer is simply a decoration. Apple's first-generation computer only sold more than 300 units, and the second-generation Apple II was born for more than a year, and sales did not improve, and it was only when Dan Blicklin and Bob Frankston of Harvard University developed the world's first spreadsheet software visicalc on the Apple II, which made the Apple II turn over.

At present, personal computer applications are still lackluster, so it is up to them to open the door to another new world, and the first king-level application that Li Yixuan chose to develop is naturally spreadsheet software that is almost everywhere.

Since the motherboard of the FC host is a mature motherboard, the tape-out is faster than originally expected, and it only took three days for the robot engineers to flow out a perfect motherboard. The pseudo-operating system is also debugged. Burn it in, boot it up, and test it.

Well, the hardware and software don't match perfectly. You can only continue to optimize, continue tape-out, and continue testing. After burning another 36 motherboards, the hardware and system finally reached perfect condition.

The company's finance sent the bills for the expenses of the technical department in the past few days, and Li Yixuan was only stunned. I didn't expect it to burn more than 80,000 US dollars in just a few days, it seems that at this time it is really not possible for ordinary people to develop a computer, which is still based on the predecessors, so much has been burned in just a few days, so everything starts from scratch, how much money should be burned?

Li Yixuan wanted to go to IBM's first personal computer, the PC, and it took two years to develop it, burning a total of $160 million in funds.

It seems that if there is a chance in the future, we will definitely get a hard disk for personal computers, and it is too expensive to be responsible, but it is just that the matching and debugging of hardware and software has cost so much money, and how much money should be burned to develop new electronic products in the future? This research and development cost is too high.

Because the motherboard and system were not done before, Li Yixuan did not start to apply it, but only did a good job of setting the structure of the spreadsheet, and now that the motherboard and system are done, he will start to apply it with all his might.

Program development comes with a few minor troubles, but that's all, thanks to the thriving open source community in another time and space, with so many collections of elite memories, and the help of robotics engineers, these problems are of limited difficulty, and a lot of time is spent looking for bugs and then fixing them one by one.

In order to catch up with the National Electronics Show held in Silicon Valley in March, Li Yixuan ate and slept in the company, and wrote thousands of lines of assembly code in four days, completed the main function of the spreadsheet, and ran reliably, which can be directly used by ordinary users as a finished product.

Finally, after testing the spreadsheet software called Excel, Li Yixuan was very satisfied with the completion time next to the version number 1.0 record on the note, February 26, 1978.

FC console is a home-oriented game console, so Nintendo company when developing, one of the first factors to consider is how to save costs, although there is a PPU installed on it, but the computer is still slightly lacking in graphics display modules.

It's useless to change a piece of PPU with stronger performance, this time and space does not have the concept of GPU, PPU is actually a picture processor, which is used by Ricoh to process photos, and the computing power is seriously insufficient, not to mention that replacing or increasing PPU makes the cost of the computer soar, not to mention, it cannot solve the actual problem. This is where the Enhancement Expansion Card comes in.

In fact, in the early days of computer development, the function enhancement expansion card has been the standard configuration of personal computers, and it is specially used to enhance the graphics and performance of the computer, this thing is a bit similar to the later graphics card, but it handles more tasks than the graphics card, until the performance of the CPU has gone up, and the function enhancement expansion card has been replaced by a more professional graphics card.

The function enhancement expansion card designed by Li Yixuan uses the Z80 processor as the core. The chip was launched in 1976, and the Z80 was founded by several technicians who had resigned from Intel, and the chip was designed to copy Intel's 8080 processor. Its clock frequency is as high as 8MHz, while the 6502 processor is currently only 1.4MHz, the gap between the two chips is huge, and the price of Z80 is also much more expensive than 6502, the purchase unit price is $60, and the 6502 is only $25.

The reason why he chose Z80 is that Li Yixuan wants to make a universal function enhancement expansion card platform around it, which can not only meet the needs of the current Excel spreadsheet, but also meet the needs of word processing software and microcomputer databases in the future, and even support printers.

It is undeniable that the cost of such a multi-functional booster card will be higher, but it can effectively reduce the user's subsequent investment. Otherwise, every time an office application software is launched, an enhancement card must be installed, and the cost is too high for users.

Burn the program into it and plug it into the PC-I slot of the motherboard. Turn it on, put it on a floppy disk, and install Excel. Smack, Li Yixuan snapped his fingers, and it ran perfectly.

After a few trials, the program runs smoothly and quickly. With the blessing of the enhancement card, the picture of the spreadsheet is also much more beautiful.

But it soon discovered a problem. The problem is that the personal computers of this period did not have hard disks, because the hard disks of this period were large and bulky, and the price was very expensive, so if the computers of this period wanted to mobilize the relevant program applications, the software must first be installed in the memory before they can be used.

This creates a problem where once the computer loses power, all the data will disappear and the software application will need to be reinstalled. Fortunately, the capacity of today's applications is very small, so it doesn't take much time to reinstall the application. What is really painful is that after the power goes out, the data that has been so hard entered has to be started again.

In fact, this problem is very easy to solve, and you can write a time break program. That is, every once in a while, the computer will automatically write the data to the floppy disk, for example, set one minute, then the computer will automatically write the data to the floppy disk every one minute.

This way, even in the event of a power outage, all the data you entered a minute ago will still be there, because it has been written to the floppy disk.

Of course, this is a little more troublesome, after entering the program, you have to take out the floppy disk and put it into a blank floppy disk, so that the data can be written to the floppy disk at any time.

Li Yixuan also wrote a reminder applet, if you don't take out the application disk, the system will prompt on the display: The system can't write, please insert the writing disk.

After such continuous revisions and modifications, the first computer of the International Intelligent Company finally completed the final design before the National Electronics Show.