In fact, in terms of seniority in Silicon Valley, William, who is nearly fifty years old this year? Millard definitely belongs to the veteran of the personal computer field, Seymour, who made his fortune with the word processing software WordStar? Rubinstein was one of his managers at the beginning.

William? Originally a salesman, Millard worked for IBM and later as head of the data processing business in the San Francisco area, where he had the opportunity to work with a variety of mainframe and minicomputer companies and gain the industry experience necessary to start his own business.

After the bankruptcy of his first company, SystemsDynamics, William? Millard founded IMSAssociates in 1973 to provide consulting services.

As a result, he caught up with a wave of good market, Edward? Roberts' MITS company unveiled the real prelude to the development of the personal computer with the introduction of Altair, a microcomputer with an affordable market price.

William? Millard seized the opportunity to develop the famous personal computer IMSAI8080 in imitation of Altair.

In order to create a loyal team, William? Millard encouraged his subordinates to participate in ErhardSeminarsTraining, the essence of which is to teach students to "help themselves" and make their hearts strong, which should be regarded as a kind of success learning.

At that time, many Hollywood stars and business celebrities had been brainwashed by this Erhard seminar, so its name was quite resounding.

Including the unruly Seymour? Naturally, many IMSAI employees, including Rubinstein, also invested in it without any psychological burden.

And these graduates basically have one trait, that is, they are not willing to easily admit that something cannot be done or a goal cannot be achieved. In other words. Advocate self-transcendence and create miracles.

And so. Take William? Millard is the center, an extraordinary operation team is formed, and the entire IMSAI has only one will from top to bottom. Even William? Millard is not in charge of the company and is not affected.

Edward? Roberts' MITS company is product-oriented, and engineers spend their days focusing on what exciting features personal computers can offer; And William? Millard's IMSAI company is market-oriented, and marketers care about the numbers on their sales reports.

Obviously, these IMSAI salesmen in suits and ties are more professional. Soon it came from behind, and the knock-off machine IMSAI overshadowed the genuine Altair.

Regardless of how the PC is revered by enthusiasts, the production of its hardware, like any other product, follows the traditional process of parts procurement, factory manufacturing, and so on.

This is very different from Tang Huan's first pot of gold to write a spreadsheet software CGrid, he found a personal computer, slept less to fight for progress, and drank more water to cushion his stomach, so that he could inhumanely reduce costs to the limit and survive the difficult period. The initial operation of IMSAI is inseparable from the actual support of real money.

Seeing that cash flow is tight, and the market outlook is so promising. William? Millard borrowed a sum of money from Marina, but the other party attached a condition that the bond could be converted into IMSAI or William? Millard's holding company, and any William? Millard may set up a twenty percent stake in the company.

IMSAI took advantage of the situation and became the first phase of personal computer development with MITS.

However, IMSAI overemphasized marketing and neglected hardware, which gradually ruined its reputation and found the spurning of users and sellers; Although MITS attaches great importance to technical investment, the threshold of personal computer technology at this time is very low, and it is quickly overwhelmed by imitators.

In the end, both IMSAI and MITS became short-lived, with the former going bankrupt and the latter being sold, and the development of personal computers entered the second phase led by Apple, Tangdi, and Commodore.

Compared to the founder of MITS, Edward? Roberts took the $2 million proceeds from the sale of the company and went to work as a carefree farmer. Millard shifted his efforts to Computer Park, a personal computer sales chain established in 1976, long before the situation at IMSAI was bad, and ushered in the second peak of his personal career.

The RadioShack bought by Tang Huan has a larger network, but its business scope is not limited to personal computers, and its style is relatively stable.

Computer Park continues to uphold William? Millard's aggressive marketing strategy, through franchise stores, has expanded extremely rapidly.

Tang Huan launched the second generation of Fangyuan computer, which brought the development of personal computers to the third stage of adopting 16-bit CPUs.

IBM-PC, which quickly followed suit, has a total of three franchised dealers, and Computer Park is one of them.

Historically, sales of computer parks will reach $400 million in 1982, the next year, and $1 billion in 1984.

But such a well-known veteran of the personal computer industry, but when the good days came, he was targeted by people who intended to get involved in the shares of the computer park.

It is said that this Silicon Valley feud was caused by a man named Martin? A former employee of Musumi's computer park, provoked after being fired from the company.

This ruthless man befriended a wealthy businessman named Andrigetto in California, and not only sold his 1 percent stake in the computer park to the other party, but also told William in his early years? The secret affair of the debt between Millard and the Marina Company.

It has to be said that these two speculative hearts are so strong that they specially formed a company called Mike Row West, and quietly bought William from the Marina Company for $300,000. Millard's IOU.

The rip-off company was calculating the time of the debt, and seeing that the time was ripe, it recently notified William of its intention to exchange the IOU for 20 percent of the shares of the computer park company. Millard.

Now the computer park has been granted several personal computer franchises, and the number of stores has expanded to hundreds, which can be described as a thriving business. No one would be willing to let the $250,000 bond of the year. Swap out 20 percent of your current family business.

William who refuses to agree? Millard. It argued that the IOU could not be transferred from Marina and argued that the 20 per cent ownership of IMSAI at that time did not constitute a proportional share in the current computer park.

In Tang Huan's opinion, William? The IOU signed by Millard that year was a veritable convertible bond, and the McCro West Company was set up specifically for this purpose, obviously trying to take advantage of this loophole. A windfall.

Such an opponent is the most difficult, after all, the computer park is a company with a formal business, and running a business is the business, and this kind of prepared scoundrel cannot afford to spend.

The same is true of the original outcome in time and space, this lawsuit was entangled for 4 years, and finally Micro West won a big victory, and the blackmail was successful, and William? Millard failed completely, and Computer Park not only spent 3 million in legal fees, but also handed over 20% of the company's shares. It was also awarded more than $141 million in damages.

Computer Park has suffered heavy losses, William? Millard's business reputation plummeted.

At last. He had to quit the computer park and sell his remaining shares for $200 million, completely avoiding the public eye. Roberts went to Saipan in the Pacific Ocean, far from the continental United States.

For William? Millard's current resistance, Tang Huan feels a little futile, after all, all the details of this loan are traceable, maybe he thinks that he is unlucky is the most appropriate way to deal with it, but William? Millard's reaction was understandable, and it was an unsolvable situation

Like the attitude of most onlookers, this good show of extortion is just a lively in Tang Huan's eyes, and at most it is used as a negative teaching material to alert himself.

But what he didn't expect was that his old rival Atari actually made up an excuse according to this, disgusted himself, and destroyed Jie Zhao? Layout of Maina.

Now that interest rates in the United States are so high, the cost of loans is increasing, and many small and medium-sized enterprises cannot afford to go bankrupt, and some workshop-style companies in Silicon Valley are naturally facing a similar dilemma.

Tang Huan is using convertible bonds to hunt down some selected targets.

The attractiveness of convertible bonds has repeatedly won Tang Huan by replacing the intimidating high interest rates of the present with future convertible share rights.

Jay? Mina was mainly responsible for the design and development of video display function modules for game consoles at Atari, and the result was the TelevisionInterfaceAdaptor-TIA, which only had 128 bytes of Atari 2600, and the excellent gaming performance depended on TIA.

Bushnell leaves Atari, Ray? When Casa took over as CEO, he shifted his focus to how to market existing products more effectively.

And Jay? Miner wanted to develop a gaming platform based on a more powerful microprocessor MC68000, but the Atari executives, who had changed their blood, preferred cheap MOS6502.

When this contradiction is unresolved, just like other employees who have left the company, Jay? Mina also chose to leave Atari with a group of followers.

Among the talent lost by Atari, David Crane - David? Crain, LarryKaplan - Larry? Kaplan, Alan Miller - Alan? Miller and Bob Whitehead - Bob? Whitehead, co-founded Act......ivision, the first third-party game publisher

This year, game designer and programmer Larry? Kaplan, who developed Kaboom!, is a testament to the strength of these technical elites in the gaming industry.

To be fair, this game comes from a released game by Atari, after all, it was developed by a group of people, but now the authors are flying solo.

As a result, Atari and Activision's company fought more fiercely, and in Atari's view, Activision was simply cutting its own flesh.

In the current American video game industry, hot money is pouring in, chaos is abundant, and even the minds of the practitioners themselves are extremely impetuous.

For example, there is a group of investors who have taken a fancy to Larry? Kaplan's abilities found him and encouraged him to start anew.

Larry, who knows the Atari roots? Kaplan, immediately found Jay who also came out to fly solo? Mina, who intends to collaborate on the development of a new gaming platform, is this the right thing to do? In Mainer's arms, the old colleagues of the past hit it off and started work with the money thrown out by the investors.

Tang Huan, who had been paying attention to collecting Silicon Valley dynamics, heard the news soon after, which immediately alerted him.

The second-generation Xiaobawang game console, which is being revised, is based on the hardware platform of MC68000, and has worked in this field for many years and has deep qualifications. Mina also plans to use MC68000 to develop new game consoles, and it will be a competitor in the future.

In addition, Tang Huan knows Jie? The bottom of Mina,

In the original time and space, his project called Amiga came up with a prototype in 1983, but it was sadly caught up with the collapse of the North American video game industry and had to be shelved.

But the Amiga's excellent performance has already caused several companies to compete with each other, and in the end, Commodore spent more than $20 million to take it down and find a new successor for its Commodore64.

Amiga uses technologies such as coprocessors in hardware, and the operating system AmigaOS supports preemptive multitasking because it performs very well in video and audio.

Commodore didn't recognize the Amiga's position as a multimedia computer and launched it as a commercial computer, but it was still a market success, selling millions of machines in total.

It can be said that at the moment Jay? Miner's work on the Amiga is similar to some of the projects in the Zheru R&D Center, and Tang Huan naturally wants to control the team.

However, there are some taboos that Tang Huan has to take into account.

EA is now a world-class listed company, so it is necessary to pay attention to its public image, pay attention to its work, and directly solicit Jie? Mina, an important employee who just left Atari, is bound to cause a crazy counterattack from the other party, as evidenced by the lawsuit between him and Activision.

As a result, Tang Huan could only take a roundabout route.

Hot money pursues short-term profits quickly, and the orderly progress of the Amiga project is tormenting one's patience in the eyes of the layman, and the enthusiasm is gradually cooling down, Jie? The Mina project team then ran into financial difficulties.

Tang Wenmao immediately seized the opportunity and sent $500,000 in convertible bonds.

But Jay? After all, Mina was born in Atari and inevitably broke ties with his old club.

So Atari, who got the news, jumped out of the bad thing and shouted, "Convertible bonds are very insidious, you want to be William?" Millard second? The old club grants you $500,000 on the condition that you have exclusive access to the new platform for one year. ”

In this regard, Tang Huan was very annoyed, Atari was simply a-stirring stick.

"Dare to compare with me to be rich." After Tang Huan snorted coldly, he immediately instructed Tang Wenmao, "On the same terms as Atari, I will pay $750,000, you go and improvise." Remember, the ultimate goal is to get Jay? The Mina team was isolated and could not fall into the hands of competitors like Atari. (To be continued......)