Chapter 159 Microsoft Type II Computer

After the Oscars were over, Catherine began to work on the Internet.

The construction of the university network on the West Coast was carried out simultaneously, and Catherine spent a lot of money to complete it in the shortest possible time.

According to the construction company's estimates, Catherine's "Noah" - the future headquarters - will be completed before all the cables are laid.

Originally, Catherine wanted to use solar panels to cover the exterior of the building, but unfortunately, this technology is not yet mature.

Noah is an all-steel frame structure, with a layer of sea-blue glass on the outside, which looks pleasing to the eye, and although it has not yet been built, it is not far from being built.

XBOX sales have now reached 1.5 million units, although it is a little worse than Nintendo's record of 500,000 units in 2 months, but for Catherine, this is already great news, after all, her XBOX appeared more than 10 years earlier than the historical FC.

Because of the good sales of the XBOX, Catherine also decided to release the second generation of Microsoft computers.

The computer, which will go on sale on October 1, will be powered by Phoenix, the Phoenix operating system. The architecture of this operating system was designed by Catherine on top of DOS, but compared to DOS, Catherine's Phoenix has better network support.

Due to the limitations of function and storage, graphical operation of the screen is basically impossible, and Phoenix uses the form of a command symbol.

Computers are not yet as widespread in every household as they were later, because there are no graphical operation screens, and it is very difficult for ordinary people to enter the mysterious field of computers.

Although Catherine knew this, she wanted to win as many users as possible, so she simply prepared a booklet dedicated to the Phoenix operating system and the accompanying commands.

Catherine modeled after the later generations of Windows, and set three versions for her second-generation Microsoft computers: home, professional and ultimate.

In the Home Edition, Catherine's Phoenix kernel is stored on a read-only memory, which means that users cannot modify Phoenix, because there is no talk of installing an operating system at this time, and there is no installation disk or anything like that, and it is quite troublesome to reinstall the system. Of course, because of this, all of Catherine's software is also "green". In fact, these software are also stored in the form of cassettes and cannot be modified, and the user experience is very limited.

As for the professional version, Catherine installed the Phoenix in the small memory of the computer, which at this time did not have later mechanical memory, and most of them were magnetic core memory devices with very limited capacity.

The difference between the flagship version and the professional version is that the flagship version uses the Z80+ CPU, and allows dual CPUs to run - in fact, this is just a gimmick, because dual CPUs also mean that when the software is made, the difficulty is increased by a square, and no one will be idle to develop such software. Sega's SS console in the original world lost to PS, not because the SS performance was not good, on the contrary, the performance of the SS threw off the PS three streets. The reason for its failure is that it uses dual CPUs, which makes it more difficult to develop, and many software vendors simply don't know how to optimize dual CPUs, so SS fails without third-party support.

In addition, Microsoft's second-generation monitors have two kinds of dazzling monitors and spherical displays, with a price difference of about 50~100 US dollars, and Catherine has also launched a complete version without a monitor.

There is no concept of a graphics card yet, but the image control device PPU is already available.

Fairchild seems to be very interested in CPU and PPU, after all, Fairchild is engaged in semiconductors, although they can also be regarded as Catherine's enemies, but for Fairchild, in fact, Catherine has been making concessions.

This has been the case since the licensing of the earliest integrated circuits.

Although the situation in the mall is changing, the instability within Fairchild also makes them lack the ability to respond to the outside world.

However, Fairchild, as the first developer to woo Catherine and be willing to act as a third party, Catherine also reciprocated by launching a model equipped with Fairchild's "Fairchild-I" type CPU. Fairchild-I, is a product of Fairchild, perhaps because Fairchild's talent is more powerful than Catherine's, so the performance of this CPU can be compared to Z80+.

Sometimes, what scientific and technological progress lacks is only a light source to the right direction, and Catherine has shown the way, and the powerful technical capabilities of Fairchild have immediately allowed them to catch up.

Take, for example, the flagship version of Microsoft's second generation.

On the motherboard, there are a total of five cartridge slots - only three for the home version, four for the professional version, and two tape count jù reading devices - only one for both the home and professional versions. ,

Inside the machine, there is a slot for the PPU, a slot for the main CPU, and a slot for the expansion CPU, and the memory is 16KB, while on the Pro and Home versions, there are three versions, 8KB, 4KB, and 2KB respectively, which are shared with the video memory, but this can be expanded.

Microsoft's second-generation computer with Phoenix is fully compatible with a generation of office software, after all, those software are originally running on that large Wenquxing, and it is not too difficult for a real computer to run such programs.

The price of the flagship version of the dazzling display is 2000 US dollars, which is about 10000 US dollars when converted to 2010, and then converted to * RMB, which is about 60000.

However, the price of the professional version has dropped significantly, using dazzle technology, it only costs $1,200, and the lowest-end home version is $899.

Regardless of which computer it is, Catherine will be giving away a Minesweeper game.

The Home and Pro versions are in the form of a cassette as a carrier, while the Ultimate version is in the form of a cassette.

The reason why it was a minesweeper game was given away, and Catherine mainly took into account the use of the mouse.

In Catherine's eyes, a computer that doesn't use a mouse is a pain in the ass

In addition to this, Catherine has also launched an office version.

The machine did not have a cassette slot, and the PPU was castrated, providing only a recordable tape device.

Such tapes are now also used as USB flash drives and floppy disks, mainly to facilitate the carrying of materials.

This model can't play games, but with the Z80 core, the processing number is more than enough, only $799 per unit, but if you buy more than 10 units, it can drop to $699.

"The network seems to be working pretty well, too."

Sitting at Apple's headquarters, Catherine looked quite satisfied.

In front of her is a flagship version of Microsoft's second-generation computer.

Twelve of these computers have been installed in various universities and tested on the network.

Looking from behind the computer, a network cable was connected to the huge optical converter, then through a section of fiber, to another converter, and then another cable was sent to the computer next to Catherine.

The computer next to Catherine is not the same as an ordinary computer, but uses IBM's storage equipment, mechanical storage, and the amount of storage that can be stored has reached 5MB

What Catherine is doing now is making a website.

Used on web pages with a text-only interface.

Phoenix can only perform a single task, which means that you cannot have multiple windows open at the same time, just like Windows.

But because of this, browsing the Internet will be smooth.

The Z80+ and 16KB are good for browsing online messages.

"It's a pity, if the hard drive could be a little more 'powerful', it would be even better."

Catherine would definitely be able to develop a lot of software if she could have a large storage device, even if it was a system limit, which was not a problem for Catherine.

"But that's all there is to it now."

Catherine began to think about how to build the company's website, which was something that would be presented to several universities in the future, and she should not lose face.

In fact, Catherine wanted to develop a colorful and graphic web page, but this idea was very unrealistic.

The current Catherine's machine can display up to 32 colors (not 32 colors of true color, but 32 colors), and the screen resolution at this time is only 320*240.

This is still the effect of the flagship version, and the lowest-end home version can only display up to 16 colors, and the screen resolution at this time can only reach 256x240.

It's okay to display a web page like this, but I'm afraid memory becomes a big tragedy.

And a web page with only a black and white text interface, even with a small memory of 2KB, can run completely without any problems.

"Alas, it would be nice if I could really run into the **......"

Catherine lamented.

Despite this sigh, on the surface, Catherine seems to have done it.

She completely separated the computer's main unit from the monitor, just as the chassis and the monitor came later. Then the keyboard and mouse are also connected, and from the outside, it seems that there is no difference from the computer at the end of the 20th century.

In this regard, although there are predictions of future trends, it is more of Cather's self-psychological comfort.

With that, Catherine slipped another cassette tape into her computer.

The number recorded in this tape is a written website sent by Stanford University.

The tape began to be scanned, and Catherine typed a command, quickly reading the contents of the tape.

Due to technical limitations, tapes can only record one number at a time, and when they are finished, they are "ungeared" to the beginning. If you want to record multiple numbers jù, you must pack them into one.

After all, tapes can't be read as freely as CDs, and the positioning of the text head is very difficult and prone to errors.

Stanford's website doesn't seem to be very good, it's just a text about the company's founding, and at the bottom are a few lines of addresses, just type in this address, and you can jump to what you want to see. As for converting addresses with a single click of the mouse, as is the case with IE, this is not possible.

But this is where Catherine's mouse comes in handy, as it can select Chinese characters and copy them to the command bar, making the whole operation quick.

"There will be bread, there will be cheese......"