Rebirth of America, this is my era

Chapter 6 Personal Computer (×) Video Games (√)

Yes, Ethan did that on purpose.

因为他所指的Altair 8800（牛郎星8800），是世界上第一台微型计算机。它于1975年1月1日和大众见面，《大众电子》这本杂志就是它的首发平台。

Since it is a commercial product, the design drawings of Altair 8800 were not published in Popular Electronics this time. Therefore, unless one has the hands-on ability and creativity like a wild Iron Man, it would be difficult to imitate.

Because of this, Ethan's questioning despite knowing the answer was actually asking for a beating.

After he dodged the Dungeness crab shell thrown by Evelyn, he raised his hands and admitted defeat in front of his murderous sister.

"Alright! Alright! Alright! I was just joking..."

Evelyn rolled her eyes at Ethan's admission of weakness. Facing this thick-skinned politician-like guy who kept provoking her, the girl felt helpless.

He curled his lips and said, "Ethan, I can't make something like Altair 8800, because its core is not the drawing and welding of circuits, but the input and output of binary data."

"If you just want me to copy its circuit, I can buy a machine and disassemble it for research. It will cost about five hundred dollars. It will only take a few days for me to figure out how Edward Roberts soldered the motherboard and embedded the memory chips. He also drew a few wire grooves on the motherboard for data storage and thus established the circuit connection between the CPU, RAM and ROM."

"But data transmission cannot be imitated in a short period of time. It will take some time to study how to compress their size."

Evelyn was telling the truth.

Before the birth of operating systems, all computers were controlled by instructions, or more commonly, computer languages. Today, FORTRAN is the most widely used language in the industry.

As the world's first high-level language to be officially promoted and used, FORTRAN has been widely used in the fields of numerical, scientific and engineering calculations. However, due to its high professionalism, it is very difficult for ordinary people without basic knowledge to learn it.

Therefore, in order to better popularize programming knowledge to the public and enable college students to better use computers, BASIC, a common symbolic instruction code for beginners, came into being. Because it is easy to understand and its seventeen statements can cover most needs, it soon after its birth went out of the campus and into society and became the preferred language for beginners to learn programming.

Altair 8800 uses a simplified version of BASIC.

As for who wrote the software?
Most people of this age don’t know this.

But Ethan Jones, who had lived in America for many years, already knew that it was a team.

One of them is Paul Allen and the other is Bill Gates.

The first step for Microsoft to enter the world was to transplant the BASIC language to the world's first personal computer.

Of course, this may be easy to say, but it is difficult to do, because the memory of personal computers in this era is very small, so in order to reserve enough space for the machine, the difficulty lies in how to compress and optimize it.

Under Paul Allen's direction, the BASIC they made for Altair 8800 was only 4KB in size.

For real masters, this thing may not be difficult to do, but for ordinary guys, it is still very difficult. After all, not everyone can afford a computer worth $250,000 at home, and not everyone can sit in front of the computer and play with code when they have nothing to do.

It was precisely because Ethan knew that this thing was difficult, so when Evelyn said she couldn't do it, Ethan didn't force it.

He clapped his hands and said, "Okay, let's do something else. You know Pong? Can you make an arcade machine like this?"

"Pong?"

Evelin only thought for a second before nodding.

"can."

Then, she came to her senses and said, "You don't want to make video games, do you?"

"Bingo! Congratulations, you got the answer right, but no extra points!"

Ethan snapped his fingers and said with a smile: "I just want to make games because I have a lot of ideas in my head."

Yes! After Ethan discovered that the return cycle in the financial investment field was too long and the personal computer industry had software programming barriers, the electronic game industry, where everyone copied from each other, became his first choice for making money!
There is no way, who made the game market in this era still a desert?

If you have an idea, you can make money.

Although he had never been involved in this industry in his previous life, it doesn’t matter, right?

Because he plays games too much!
In his previous life, the things in the content libraries of Steam, PS, Xbox and NS were his lifeblood!

Since the 1990s, he played "Kurotide" on his home computer while flipping through an English-Chinese dictionary, and more than 20 years later, he played "It Takes Tow" with his girlfriend holding a controller after work. These are the beautiful memories of his life!

And now...

Can memories be monetized?
This is simply the most wonderful thing in the world! Evelin didn't know why Ethan was so happy, but she knew that her brother must have some tricks up his sleeve.

At the same time, she was a little worried, "Ethan! Your inspiration doesn't come from Mi Luohua, does it?"

"If you want to copy Milova's game to get back at them for firing you... then there's no way I can help you! Absolutely not!"

"How is that possible! Do I look like that kind of person?" Ethan was a little unhappy.

"Like. You are the kind of guy who will take revenge even though you look gentle." Evelyn said seriously.

"???"

Ethan was a little speechless, he didn’t expect that he would be like this in Evelin’s eyes.

"I really didn't plagiarize Mi Luohua."

Ethan emphasized.

However, his words did not receive any response.

Evelin still looked at him with suspicion.

Ethan threw up his hands in such a situation. Not knowing how to explain, he started to act like a rogue, "Evelyn! You just said you would help me do this! You can't go back on your word!"

“…” Evelin was stunned for a moment.

The next second she shook her head helplessly, "Yeah~Yeah~Yeah~"

Ethan's shameless tricks made Evelyn feel like she had returned to the past.

A few years ago, when she was tinkering with all kinds of fun things in Popular Electronics, Ethan pestered her to make toys like this. Although she thought Ethan was annoying at the time, but...

Well, Evelyn thought about it briefly and realized that Ethan could always succeed with her by playing tricks.

"So are you going to tell me your ideas verbally, or do you have a complete plan?"

Now that Ethan has started to cheat, Evelyn wants to assess the severity of the matter by identifying inspiration.

And her question made Ethan happy.

"Of course there is a complete plan."

"Wait for me, I'll go back to the bedroom to get it."

Evelin was somewhat surprised by Ethan's cautious approach.

In her opinion, Ethan's idea of ​​asking her to make a game must have been due to his excessive enthusiasm after being fired by Mi Luohua today, but she didn't expect that this guy actually had a plan.

And when Ethan brought over the three-page document, Evelin was even more shocked.

Although the paper was a little worn, there were many stains at the footer, and the text on it was scribbled over, the content was complete and clear.

Ethan used the first piece of paper to explain his game concept:

This is a game where there is no victory, only failure.

The second page summarizes how to play the game:

The player will control a constantly moving object of a specific length on a bounded plane, and use its head to hit the light spots that keep appearing on the plane, which can make it grow. The game will not end until it touches the boundary or itself.

The third page is a game interface——

On it, Ethan drew a snake.

That's right!

What Ethan wants to do is——

"Snake Game"!
Note: ① The story of Bill Gates and Paul Allen writing BASIC for Altair8800 is actually very interesting. They said that since there was no prototype at the time, they created an emulator on DEC PDP-10, which was a popular computer in universities at the time, to emulate Altair, and then spent about a month to develop a BASIC interpreter. But when they were filming a documentary about them in 94, something interesting happened. When a reporter interviewed Harvard University, the person who managed the laboratory equipment at Harvard University said that he didn't know about this matter, and said that he didn't often see them using machines at that time, and said that Bill Gates and Paul Allen might have used MIT's machines. When the reporter went to MIT, they were not in the MIT laboratory entry and exit records. So how did these two people develop a BASIC interpreter without a machine like gods? Now only Bill Gates should know, after all, Paul Allen has passed away.

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(End of this chapter)