From a certain point of view, COMDEX, which was born for computers, now has a bit of an industry vane. It is like a magnet, attracting individuals and enterprises to come and showcase their technologies and products on this platform.

OR YOU CAN SAY THAT IF SOMEONE HASN'T PARTICIPATED IN COMDEX BEFORE, THEY ARE EMBARRASSED TO SAY THAT THEY ARE PART OF THE IT INDUSTRY.

The popularity of COMDEX can also be seen from the number of exhibitors increasing from a few hundred in the first session to the current thousands, as well as the rapid growth of the total number of visitors to 10,000 daily traffic.

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

Sheldon Adelson, the founder of COMDEX, is well aware of Tang Huan's role, so he has been trying to maintain the friendship between the two sides, and even the summary information of the exhibitors is sent as quickly and completely as possible.

"There are two guys who can dominate an era. When Tang Huan first saw the names of Compaq and Lotus, he began to mutter.

……

This year's fall COMDEX opens in Las Vegas on November 29th.

While the influential figures in the industry talk about the development of the industry, they also inevitably walk around each other or meet unexpectedly, such as Tang Huan and Don Estlic, who met again.

As the 5.25-inch PC hard drive became more and more popular with users, the IBM-PC division was not as unresponsive as the head office, and quickly adopted the IBM-PC base. The new IBM-PC/XT model was launched. Paired with a 10MB Seagate hard drive. At the same time, the basic memory capacity has been increased to 128KB.

The product model is 5160 IBM-PC/XT, just a simple enhancement of the product model 5150 IBM-PC, XT is "eXtendedTechnology" meaning, and there is no such thing as the third generation of Fangyuan computer under development compared with the second generation of Fangyuan computer, in multimedia, network and other aspects have major functional innovations.

If you have to compare the ability of new technologies and product launches, the prototype XT/370 that IBM-PC has come up with is barely a gimmick.

Based on the XT, it provides IBM mainframe System/370 terminal emulation capabilities. The hardware implementation relies mainly on expansion cards with two Motorola microprocessor MC68000.

I just don't know if there is any credit for these products as the chief designer of IBM-PC, Liu Ogelblecht.

After seeing Don Estlic, Tang Huan said straight to the point: "IBM-PC and Fangyuan Computer compete in competition, but some technical standards should be consistent in the industry, which is beneficial to everyone, such as LAN technology, and the 3COM Ethernet specification is of great use." ”

"IBM has its own excellent and mature network technology, the Token Ring, which is based solely on the data transfer rate because it has no transmission conflicts. Therefore, a 4M Token Ring network can be equivalent to a 10M Ethernet. It can be seen that Ethernet is not competitive at all. Don Estlic replied lightly.

More than two months ago, the incident of Liu Oglecht's east window brought a huge shock to the IBM-PC department.

Until now, Don Estlic has not chosen a successor to the chief engineer, and he can be said to be exhausted, and even when he talks to Tang Huan at this time, he has no interest in-for-tat.

"The application environment of the token ring network is too idealistic, and network nodes such as mainframes and minicomputers, with their closed systems, will not produce obvious problems, but personal computers are not suitable, and openness is its biggest feature. ”

Speaking of this, Tang Huan smiled slightly, "Such a complex network environment, similar to the human society of three religions and nine streams, it is unrealistic to expect each network node to return it as soon as it is used up, rather than selfishly and selfishly monopolizing the token, the only credential for network resource control." ”

After listening to Tang Huan's analysis, Don Estlic's face moved, but finally he shook his head, "Maybe what you said has some truth, but IBM is enough to stand on its own and use strong technical strength to deal with complex application environments." ”

Although the competition between Fangyuan Computer and IBM started in the personal computer market and gradually expanded to the field of enterprise applications, in the case of Don Estlic, the scope of the confrontation between him and Tang Huan was limited to IBM-PC and Fangyuan personal computer.

Moreover, Don Estlic is just an IBM department executive, far less intense than the contradictions at the level of company bosses like Tang Huan and Steve Ross, so much so that there is mutual prejudice in each other's hearts.

Therefore, Tang Huan's words, Don Estlic listened patiently.

But this also invisibly made Don Estlic's identity a little shorter when facing Tang Huan, and when he talked, he always weakened a little bit of momentum.

Just like the question of the technical standards of personal computer LANs, how could Don Estlic have the capital to easily abandon IBM's ready-made token ring network like Tang Huan, but he could not say it, so he had to find another excuse to prevaricate and appear to be cringe.

Seeing this scene, Tang Huan couldn't help but be a little disappointed. The Internet is a big proposition, and it is necessary to recruit as many people as possible to run it, but it is clear that Don Estlic has not yet understood the subtlety.

At this time, they wandered to a very lively booth, and the words "Compaq portable computers are 100% compatible with IBM-PC" greeted them, which was very eye-catching, but for the IBM-PC gang, it was a bit dazzling.

Don Estlic stared at the 9-inch monitor of Compaq's laptop, which showed the correct operation of the famous software on the IBM-PC platform, indicating that the product was indeed 100% compatible with IBM-PC, which made his face suddenly look ugly.

The reason why Don Estlic actively promoted the disclosure of the IBM-PC specification was because he wanted to attract more third-party vendors to develop value-added products such as function expansion cards for the IBM-PC platform, so as to catch up with the leading Fangyuan personal computers, rather than encouraging others to develop IBM-PC compatible machines.

Otherwise, Don Estlic would not have held the BIOS, which he regarded as the most important technology, in his hands.

Taking 10,000 steps back, even if IBM-PC is currently inferior to Fangyuan personal computers in terms of market position, but after all, the meat is rotten in a pot, and its hardware income is completely owned by the blue giant, but now an IBM-PC compatible machine has suddenly popped up to share the pie.

What the hell is this Compaq computer?

How does it achieve the 100% compatibility it claims to be?

100% cracked BIOS is pretty much the same.

Don Estlic made a gesture, gritted his teeth and ordered his subordinates, "You go and touch the details of this Compaq computer, we haven't issued any authorization for the BIOS at all, they are trying to secretly suck blood on us, don't you think IBM doesn't have a lawyer!"

Seeing that Don Estlic was so angry, Tang Huan shook his head, the topic could not be continued, it was useless to stay longer, and turned to leave.

As for Compaq portable computers, Tang Huan, with his own technical background, understood at a glance that the BIOS of IBM-PC has been thoroughly studied by others. No matter how detailed the situation is, let the subordinates collect it.

Now that you've seen Compaq Computer, your next stop is of course to look at Lotus Software. When Tang Huan arrived at his booth, he found that it was also bustling with industry, and there was a circle of industry insiders - Charles Simeone, Gates, Dan Bricklin, etc.

"The man who was talking was Mitchell Kapole, the founder of the Lotus company. They developed a spreadsheet software, Lotus1-2-3, which looked very good, and they were confident that the market was not doing well, so they invested $1 million in advertising. Charles Simeone whispered.

"This Mitchell Kapole is really not very confident. Tang Huan bowed slightly, turned his gaze, and saw that Gates was the same as Don Estlic just now, his face was pale.

"What's wrong with Gates?" Tang Huan asked casually.

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

Speaking of this, Charles Simeone, with a serious expression, showed a smile in his eyes, "Microsoft's MultiPlan is the most troublesome, it can only support up to 256KB of memory capacity, while Lotus1-2-3 not only supports larger memory, but also has further improved running efficiency, which suddenly pushes Microsoft's MultiPlan to a dead end." ”

With Charles Simeone's explanation, Tang Huan realized that the IBM-PCs placed on the Lotus Software booth represent the use environment with memory capacity of 64KB, 128KB, 256KB, and 512KB respectively. The same version of Lotus1-2-3, when processing the same data file, with the increase of memory, its running speed is improved, and the comparison is made at once.

Looking at Mitchell Kapole, who was explaining Lotus 1-2-3 with flying eyebrows, Tang Huan couldn't help but raise his eyebrows, it seems that the real PC industry brawl is about to begin.

Tang Huan was pondering what kind of variables would be produced by the appearance of Compaq and Lotus, when he saw a subordinate hurrying over and hurriedly reported: "Our booth has been disrupted, and the demonstration system cannot operate normally. (To be continued......)