Estlic was upset when his secretary Jennifer knocked on the door and walked in. Estlic gloomy and asked, "Jenny, won't there be any more bug reports?" ”

"Mr. Manager, there is actually someone who wants to see you. Jennifer saw that Estlic's face was not good, and spoke cautiously.

Estlic waved his hand irritably: "I don't see anyone, let him get out." ”

"He said he wanted to talk to you about the operating system. Jennifer was terrified, but decided to give it a try.

"Bullshit operating system!" Estlic is now a little allergic to the words operating system, and he wants to get angry when he mentions it, but when he sees the thick BUG report on the desktop, he decides to give this guy a chance, there shouldn't be a worse operating system than DOS in this world, "Let him in." ”

Jennifer hurriedly exited the office and said to Dr. Yu, who was waiting, "Sir, you can go in, the manager is waiting for you inside." ”

Dr. Yu pushed the door and walked into Estrich's office and said hello: "Hello, Mr. Estlic, I was introduced by Mr. Grove. ”

Estlic thought about it, as if there was such a thing, but he was so busy catching insects every day that he almost forgot, "You are Dr. Yu?

"That's right, that's me. Dr. Yu said.

"How about a cup of coffee, may you be seated?" asked Estlic.

"Thanks, no need. Dr. Yu politely said and sat down, "I'm actually here today to talk to you about the operating system. ”

"I've heard Grove say that you're starting your own business now, and it seems that you're working on software, but also operating systems?" asked Estlic.

"I'm working with someone right now on software development, and I don't know if you've ever heard of VisualForm on Mac, which is what we do. Dr. Yu introduced.

"I've heard of that, I think VisualForm should also have a companion operating system, Kylin, maybe ......," Estlic felt a little intrigued.

"Exactly, we also developed the Kylin operating system, I wonder if your company is interested?" Dr. Yu began to get into today's topic.

Estlic didn't expect the unfoundable Kylin OS developer to appear in front of him in this way, and he was certainly interested, and if there was a bug-free operating system to replace the damn DOS system, he would be too late to be happy. For something as big as changing the operating system supplier, the decision is still up to the upper echelons of the company, and Estlic himself can only make suggestions, but when he thinks of the relationship between Ex and Bill's mother, he feels that his suggestions may not have any effect. In order to give himself more choices, and for the smooth implementation of the checkers plan, Dr. Yu was fortunate to become the second supplier of the operating system of the checkers plan, enjoying the same treatment as Microsoft, of course, including the development machines provided by IBM.

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When Zhang Lexing and Yang Xinxin arrived in San Jose, it was just when Dr. Yu had officially signed a contract with IBM and was waiting for the development machine to be in place. Zhang Lexing was overjoyed to hear that Dr. Yu had won the position of the second supplier of the operating system, he had long heard that Microsoft's first version of DOS was a super bug nest, and he was very confident that he could replace it with Kylin. However, the most important thing at the moment is to get the company's technical department up quickly, and Zhang Lexing alone can't do it.

The next day, Zhang Lexing and his party came to the company, and just after sitting for a while, Dennis brought the technical staff for the interview. After several rounds of exchanges, Zhang Lexing felt that the level of the four people who came to the interview this time was not bad, especially one of them named Kevin, who had very good skills and a great view of the overall situation, which was very suitable for being the development team leader and leading the project. Zhang Lexing was very satisfied, and after discussing with Yang Xinxin and others, he announced that all four of them had been admitted. Next is the computer purchase time, IBM machines have not yet arrived, and everyone cannot be idle.

After lunch, everyone formed a team to kill the computer store, and after a period of sweeping, they moved back two Apple IIplus, planning to develop some software on the Apple machine first to generate income. The easiest thing to do on the Apple machine this year is the game,Picture、The sound effects are still very simple,But although Zhang Lexing's mind is full of all kinds of games,But most of the pictures are too exquisite,It's basically impossible to do it on Apple II,Fortunately, I still think of a few suitable ones in the end。 Considering the current manpower, Zhang Lexing picked two simple ones to do, one is digging for gold (aka the police catch thieves) and the other is cubes (a simplified version of the smash hit Tetris on Apple II).

With the goal set, Zhang Lexing led several developers to start the game design journey. There is a lot of strength in numbers, and with Zhang Lexing's guidance, it only took five days for the two games to be completed. The next task is Yang Xinxin and Dennis's, relying on the software sellers contacted in advance, the two games are put on the shelves, and Yang Xinxin also arranges college students to demonstrate the gameplay of the two games for customers in the software sales store.

With simple controls and challenging level design, the two games quickly set off a small craze, especially the block game, which made many Apple players addicted to it and constantly tried to challenge their limits. The sudden block game craze even led to a slight increase in sales of the Apple II, and even Tripp Hawkins, Apple's head of marketing, became interested.

At this time, Zhang Lexing and his development team couldn't care about these things at all, because IBM's development machine had been sent, and IBM's technical commissioner came with the machine, who came to investigate the confidentiality of the development environment. The technical specialist first rejected our plan to develop an open-plan office area, and then chose a separate office in the innermost part of the office, which was less than 10 square meters in size and had no windows and no air conditioning. The technical commissioner also specifically proposed that the door of this room should be locked at all times, and all equipment and documents related to IBM's checkers program must be placed in this room, and for security reasons, IBM also provided a special safe to store documents related to the program. Before leaving, the technologist offered to put a barbed wire fence on the ceiling of the room to prevent anyone from coming down from the roof to steal confidential information, and Zhang Lexing felt like he was being caged in a cage, so he joined the developers in raising strong objections, and IBM gave up on the absurd request.

The development office was completed, and the development of the Kylin operating system for the PC version of VisualSystem began. There are two development machines sent by IBM, and the hardware configuration is different, the processors are all used by Intel Corporation8088CPU, one memory has *KB, and the other is only 16KB, both are equipped with two 5.25-inch floppy drives, one uses a color display in terms of display, and the other uses a monochrome display. The reason why two units were sent was also because Estlic wanted VisualSystem to be able to test in different environments and facilitate the development of operating systems.

The first problem faced by the development team led by Zhang Lexing was to figure out the hardware structure of the IBM development machine, which was also thanks to the support of Estlic, and the random data sent contained a lot of hardware details, system structure and other information, and even included some information collected in the process of IBM supporting Microsoft's development of the DOS system, which made the development team of VisualSystem equivalent to standing on the shoulders of giants and had a good starting position. Referring to the detailed random data, Zhang Lexing and the technicians quickly figured out the architecture and system invocation methods of the IBM development machine.

Then the development team entered the system design stage, in another part of Zhang Lexing's life, his Kylin operating system was ported to a PC/XT computer (an upgraded version of the upcoming IBM-PC, launched in 1983), although Zhang Lexing does not remember all the code, but the system structure, The code of the module division and key parts is still fresh in my memory, so Zhang Lexing took out a draft system design not long after, and after careful discussion with Kevin and others, the development team officially began to write the code.

Since then, the development team led by Zhang Lexing has been nested in a hut of less than 10 square meters, enduring the high temperature and stuffiness to write code day and night, relying on the code left before and the random information provided by IBM, one obstacle after another has been gradually solved, when the last day of July came, the Kylin operating system and the C compiler running on it were finally completed and passed the test, and VisualSystem was able to successfully complete the agreement with Estlic, and could start supplying to IBM。

When the copy of Kylin's system was submitted to the checkers project team, Zhang Lexing began to nervously and excitedly look forward to the news of the launch of IBM-PC, even if the two games "Gold Dig" and "Cube" were sold during this period and brought more than 400,000 US dollars in profits. The days passed in waiting......

On August 12, 1981, IBM officially released the product of the Checkers Program in New York - IBM-PC, which was launched in the form of a series, including a low-end basic model with 16KB of memory to a high-end machine with color graphics display capabilities. Optional operating systems include Microsoft's DOS system, VisualSystem's Kylin operating system, and Digital Research's CP/M-86 operating system.

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