Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 47 The real gold mountain!
Many people may not have heard of the MOS 6502 CPU.

This is normal, because the company that produced it, MOS, went bankrupt shortly after the advent of the Internet era.

The specific problem can be attributed to financial issues.

But at the same time, the death of MOS also made the MOS 6502 CPU even more legendary, because it is the only CPU in the world that broke Moore's Law before it became invalid! It is also the only product that has a longer lifespan than the company itself!

That’s right! After MOS company went bankrupt, MOS 6502, or its upgraded products, are still being sold! The key to this situation is that the design of MOS 6502 is too practical!
When talking about the MOS 6502 CPU, we have to mention their design team.

The design team of this CPU mostly comes from Motorola, and many of them are even the main architects of Motorola's first generation of Shenxin 6800. When they first designed MOS 6502, their goal was to create the cheapest CPU in the world.

Because these engineers left Motorola after their design concepts diverged from Motorola's strategic planning. They felt that Motorola's planning in the CPU field should not be benchmarked against Intel, and Motorola should not produce CPUs with the same performance as Intel, but should serve the public and reduce the cost of acquiring computers for more customers.

They even believed that personal computers could not be a symbol of status and class.

The significance of technological iteration is to popularize products.

But Motorola denied their idea. After fruitless discussions, these engineers had no choice but to leave collectively and gather at MOS. Then... they created MOS 6502.

Then, this CPU changed the world.

MOS 6502 has completely lowered the price of personal computers! It has made computers, which were once only used by the government, the military, major enterprises, and various universities, enter the doors of hundreds of thousands of households, and officially ushered in the computer age!
If it were just these, it would not be enough to write its legend.

After the computing power of MOS 6502 could no longer support the needs of computers, this CPU was simply modified with a port change and slightly upgraded in performance. It was then put into home consoles by major game companies, the most popular of which was Nintendo's FC!

The perfect performance and extremely cheap price allowed Nintendo to make money with a console that should have been a loss-making product!
But this is not the highlight of MOS 6502.

What’s even more amazing about MOS 6502 is that when Nintendo also felt that its computing power was insufficient and decided to phase it out, it found its way into the arms of Bandai. The globally popular Tamagotchi, or electronic pet egg, was made by modifying it!
Even so, when the new century arrived, MOS 6502 had not yet retired.

When the Eastern market was booming, a modified version of MOS 6502 was used in Wenquxing and Haojixing.

In his previous life, the old professor who taught the marketing class that Ethan took once said this.

"MOS 6502 is perhaps one of the best products in the world, as the recorded sales volume alone has exceeded one billion. More importantly, since its birth, it has been active in the market and has had a revolutionary impact on many industries."

Ethan even remembered that the old professor commented on MOS 6502 like this:

"If you want to become a company as evergreen as Coca-Cola, the most important thing to do is to find a way to make huge profits from low prices. Although MOS failed, they did not fail in MOS 6502, but failed in the layout of the industrial chain."

"Alan Kay, winner of the Turing Award, once said: "People who're serious about software should make their own hardware."

"MOS produced the best hardware in the world, but they didn't make software. They only made the lowest profit from 6502, and more money was earned by other consumer product companies."

“This is really a pity.”

When Ethan was listening to this class in his previous life, he thought that MOS 6502 was so awesome!

And now, this is the central microprocessor that Wozniak was talking about?
'Fuck! Shouldn't this thing be used on Apple 2? Why is it used on Apple 1?'

"No! When did this thing come out? This special one seems to be the real gold mine!"

Ethan's eyes were a little hot.

But to Wozniak, it was a desire to witness a miracle.

After showing the MOS 6502, the little fat man said: "Although you have come to my house, I can't show you the true charm of this central microprocessor now."

“It will take some time because I haven’t made the circuit board I designed yet.”

This statement made the two of them take the initiative to express their opinions.

"No problem, I can wait." Jobs said directly: "If you need my help, you can just tell me. Atari doesn't care. Nolan won't care about me anyway."

"Stephen, I don't have anything to do. You know, I have Snake Game, so I just need to wait to collect the money." Ethan Jones also said with a smile: "But if you need my help, you may have to help me solve the accommodation problem, because I don't live at home recently. I live in San Francisco. It's troublesome to run back and forth every day."

"Okay, okay." Wozniak laughed. "Guys, I'm glad you guys can join us!"

"Because my ideas are a bit complicated, it might be slow for one person to do it."

"So, follow me."

While talking, Wozniak also took the two into his garage.

Ethan was dazzled by the dazzling array of instruments, but Wozniak easily picked them up and spread out the drawings on the table. "Brothers, you have all seen Altair. I don't know what you think of that computer, but I want to tell you that the machine is so anti-human!"

"All signal transmission relies on the movement of the joystick, which is a very high threshold for ordinary people who have never been exposed to computers because they don't understand what binary is."

"So, my computer will be like the ones in college, with a keyboard."

"So, its production will be quite troublesome. I will be responsible for the circuit board, and can you two help me make the machine's shell and keycap rocker? As you know, the keyboards of the machines in school are larger, and mine is only the size of a briefcase, so normal keycaps cannot be used."

"No problem." Jobs shook his head.

"It's my pleasure," Ethan said with a smile.

"Okay, let's get started."

The little fat man nodded and prepared to assign tasks.

However, the next second, he paused again, looked up and said, "No, I have a question."

"Ethan, can you cook?" "A little, what's wrong?"

“Okay, we won’t.” The little fat man clapped his hands and said, “It’s not that we won’t, it’s mainly because Steve’s cooking is too unpalatable. He only likes to eat vegetarian food now, but I can’t. I want to eat meat.”

When these words came out, Jobs was unhappy.

"Oh Stephen! I told you to just meditate with me! This step is easy to take!"

"No, No, No!"

The little fat boy shook his head like a rattle.

"My body is given by my mother. She will be very sad if I lose weight."

"You are clearly looking for an excuse for your own indulgence!"

"Then next time you see my mother, tell her in person!"

Amid their noise, the production gradually got into the theme.

In the next few days, Ethan also saw the level of the top geeks of this era.

Oh no, Wozniak can't be considered a geek.

Because he used the minimalist wisdom developed by the military industry.

While Altair, the most popular computer on the market, used six circuit boards to operate properly, the computer designed by Steve Wozniak only had one circuit board.

And this circuit board is like a honeycomb, densely packed.

On the circuit diagram he designed, there were four rows of transistors that needed to be soldered.

On the right side of the bottom row are eight random access memories connected in series, with a total size of eight kilobytes.

Right next to the random access memory is the home of MOS 6502.

On the far left is the keyboard interface.

Ethan could understand up to this point, but when he went up, he couldn't understand the other three rows of circuit diagrams.

Apart from the video port marked on the upper left corner, the only things he recognized were the three batteries on the upper right corner.

Yes, in the computer designed by Wozniak, there is actually a battery!

That's not even an AA battery, it's a huge battery that's 1.5 inches in diameter, 2.4 inches high, and has a voltage of 4.5 volts!
When Ethan saw the battery interface, he was completely stunned!

Because this thing looks so fucking fantastic!

The world's first Apple computer actually had a battery? What's the difference between this and future laptops?
When Ethan asked Wozniak why the computer motherboard had to have a battery, the fat boy's face suddenly showed pride, "This is my special design. I call it a fully regulated power supply."

"Ethan, you should know that there are many countries on this earth, and the voltage standards of different countries are different. For example, our country is 120 volts, but Liben is 100 volts or 200 volts. In this case, when electrical appliances from different countries are used in foreign countries, converters are needed. And my fully regulated power supply is a converter, which can allow the computer to work at any voltage between 100 volts and 240 volts."

"I told you, Altair is garbage!"

“They never considered how ordinary people feel when they use computers!”

"What the hell! Is that so?" Ethan was a little surprised.

He didn't expect that Wozniak would even consider such a thing?

At this moment, he even felt that this fat man was a time traveler!
Because if it's just for personal use, he doesn't need any voltage converter, right?

Only if you feel from the beginning that what you design will become popular all over the world, will you make something!

After five days of rush work, on June 1975, 6, a computer in a brown wooden box was finally released. When Wozniak tapped the keyboard and characters appeared on the black screen...

The little fat boy's face was immediately filled with joy.

"Liquid! I knew I was a genius!"

Jobs was also excited.

"Ohhhhhh! It's our own computer!"

"Congratulations Steve! You did it!"

Ethan cheered too.

But at the same time, he also confirmed one thing.

There was no flaw in his memory, MOS 6502, that was Jinshan!

And it is a mountain of gold that has only been touched by Steve Wozniak so far!

Note: ①MOS 6502 is a legendary chip that has entered the chip hall of fame. Products based on it include Apple 1, 2, Atari home consoles 2600, 5200, 7800, 800, Nintendo FC, Commodore PET and a bunch of other popular electronic products at the time. Of course, some of these products use the upgraded and modified version of 6502. ②Nintendo's NFC is actually also a 6502 chip. WDC 65C816 is modified based on 6502, and the person who modified it is the patent holder of 6502. ③Regarding the departure of Motorola engineers, in November 1975, Robert Galvin, the CEO of Motorola at the time, said in an interview with the media that those R&D personnel came up with a very good idea, but Motorola did not grasp it. This was his problem. He may have made Motorola miss the opportunity to embrace the world. From today's perspective, Motorola did miss an opportunity to surpass IBM and even dominate the world. If 11 appeared in Motorola's hands, or if Motorola accepted the concept of electronic consumer products, the trillion-level market of games and electronic equipment might still appear, but at the beginning, Motorola was definitely the leader. No one knows whether X6502 can make a comeback, because that is another story. Robert, who messed up all this, became the chairman of Motorola in the 86s because his father was the founder of Motorola. Motorola was originally called Galvin Manufacturing Company.

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(End of this chapter)