Author: quiet thoughts

Chapter 310 FM-7

From Minato-ku, Tokyo, Hongkawa Kaede and Nakajima Heitaro came to Fujitsu's Consumer Electronics Division together.

"Hongchuan-san, Nakajima-san, we've been waiting for you for a long time."

Moriyoshi Matatsuka of the Semiconductor Division and Ryuji Tokita of the Consumer Electronics Division stood at the door to greet the SIC group.

Hongchuan Feng smiled and shook their legs, "It's true that I am grateful for your company's care."

From the perspective of supply and demand, Fujitsu is not considered a customer of SIC.

But we can stand at the door to greet them, which shows that Fujitsu attaches great importance to SIC.

Since ancient times, Party A has always been a father. When did Party B become so polite?

So although I don’t know how our own chips will perform in products, I think they should be good.

Hongchuan Feng, who was in a good mood, was also greeted with a smile early on.

"You're welcome, Benikawa-san, the chip jointly developed by SIC and Fujitsu performs very well.

They are very confident about that generation of products. Without further ado, let’s go and see the performance of Fujitsu’s new generation personal computer FM-7. Please!”

As he spoke, Yamazuka Moichi stretched out his legs and signaled to Hongchuan Kaede and the others to invite him first.

"Please!" Hongkawa Kaede owed Dong Shen and took Heitaro Nakajima and the others into the exterior of the Fujitsu Building.

In fact, Fujitsu and SIC have jointly developed a new generation of computer processors, but SIC is not actually the main force.

Regarding the Fujitsu personal computer FM-7, the processor it is equipped with is SIC8089F, which is a modified version of the 8-bit enhanced chip SIC8089.

As you can tell from the name, its main structure has not changed, but it has been specially optimized for the computer version.

In addition, it is called a processor because other modules are integrated externally.

Compared with the single-core SIC8089, the processor SIC8089F has more comprehensive functions and more powerful computing power.

"Hongchuan-san, please take a look at the FM-7 they are planning to launch next month."

In the office, Matsuka Moichi pointed to a red machine on the table and introduced it to Hongkawa Kaede and the others.

It has a very retro style. The first time Hong Chuanfeng saw it, he thought of the big-ass computers from the past.

No, the machine in front of me is more retro than a big-ass computer.

Its shape is square and square, very similar to the 14-inch black and red TV used at home in the 1980s and 1990s, except that the color has changed to red.

Fujitsu's FM-7 is an all-in-one computer, with the monitor and host integrated together.

There is a beige keyboard attached to the front of them. The style follows the line of the console, which is thick and bulky.

The appearance of the keyboard is almost the same as that of popular home game consoles. It’s no wonder that Nintendo and others like to position their game consoles as home computers. That’s the reason.

Due to the shape of the Fujitsu FM-7, Hongkawa Kaede was noncommittal.

In his opinion, people of that era had long been accustomed to that kind of aesthetic style.

Judging from the complacent look on Matsuka Moriyoshi, maybe they thought it was cool.

Hongchuan Electric currently does not have a personal computer business, otherwise Hongchuan Feng would definitely teach him what appearance design is and what aesthetics is.

To demonstrate the functionality of the computer, the staff on the side also plugged in the computer and pressed the power button.

Soon the screen lit up, and the letters "MSDS" jumped out, followed by the oriental "Microsoft" logo.

That's right, Fujitsu's FM-7 uses the first generation operating system developed by Microsoft for personal computers, the MS-DOS system.

According to Fujitsu's original plan, the FM-7 would not use F-Basic, the company's language instruction set, or Microsoft's OS-9.

However, due to Hong Chuanfeng's strong suggestion, it is now used as an MS-DOS system for individual users.

At first, Fujitsu was a little hesitant about which system would be better to use.

The most important thing is safety, never make changes easily, and be cautious about any new attempts.

If you continue to use the previous system, it is the best choice and there won't be so many problems.

As for whether the new DOS system is more user-friendly for individual users, that is not at all outside their scope of consideration.

Even after evaluation by external employees, they felt that the DOS system was more convenient to use.

But when making the decision in the first place, the management still failed.

Their reason is simple: as a product provider, we do not seek to easily change users' usage habits.

They are really stubborn and persistent. Hong Chuanfeng didn't know how to evaluate them after hearing the news.

People who play with technology, especially products related to the Internet, tend to stick to the rules and don’t know how to adapt.

It’s no wonder that in the later Internet information age, Neon was left behind by Yuanji and didn’t reap any dividends.

Just that kind of excessive caution is destined to make no groundbreaking move.

So how did Hong Chuanfeng convince them to switch to MS-DOS system?

It's very simple. SIC's processor SIC8089F has been specially adapted to the DOS system.

It can even be said that SIC8089F is developed based on DOS system and has been logically optimized.

In actual use, the fluency and computing speed of the DOS system are much higher than Fujitsu's own F-Basic.

It is no exaggeration to say that when the same processor is used in the two different systems, the FM-7 performs completely differently.

Faced with the facts, Fujitsu had to compromise and initially switched to a DOS system.

After all, Fujitsu has put in a lot of effort into the research and development of the processor. You can't just abandon it just because of a system.

And why did Hongchuan Kaede insist on convincing Fujitsu to use the DOS system?

Nonsense, don't you want to see if my own F-Basic can be used by others?

Hong Chuanfeng couldn't stand the crappy operating habits and almost non-existent UI for even a minute.

Please tell me that it depends on Microsoft when it comes to the system. Although the current DOS is also crude and crude, it is at least very usable.

And whether the instruction set of SIC8089F and Microsoft's DOS are bound to each other and compatible, and it has obtained official recognition and authorization from Microsoft.

The reason why the little-known SIC can reach cooperation with Microsoft is also due to Shima Masatoshi's dealing with it.

He has been in Silicon Valley for eight or nine years and has quite a lot of connections.

Previously, Shima Masato was responsible for chip research and development at Intel, so it was natural that he would inevitably deal with companies like Microsoft and IBM.

Whether the chip and the operating system are complementary to each other, Intel and Microsoft have frequent exchanges in their monthly work.

For that reason, when Shima Masatoshi came to the door, Microsoft agreed to cooperate with SIC without much consideration.

Apart from that relationship, Microsoft at this time was just a small company.

You can start one more business in Neon and promote your own system at the same time. Why not?

That’s why SIC8089F can perfectly adapt to DOS at this time.

And its performance did not disappoint the people present. In the staff's on-site operations, whether it was calculation, text processing, or simple graphic drawing, it was very smooth.

Even running the popular game "Pac-Man" is easy.

The images of ghosts and monsters in different colors appear before our eyes, no less impressive than their performance in Jiaowangzai.

After using it for a while, Hongchuan Feng touched the big butt of the computer and said, "Not bad, it runs smoothly and there is no sign of heat.

The color performance is also very reliable and is clearly distinguishable to the human eye.”

Matsuka Moriyoshi also nodded with satisfaction, "The performance of SIC8089F has played a critical role, which is much better than they expected."

Fujitsu's previous models used 8-bit processor chips from Motorola and Zilog.

Customers can choose between the two types of chips according to their own preferences.

But no matter which one it is, it is not an 8-bit chip.

The current SIC processor can be enhanced, and its performance is nearly 2 times stronger than the former.

More importantly, SIC8089F integrates a small graphics processor externally. In layman's terms, it is equivalent to the nuclear display of later generations.

Is this another major advantage of SIC, which is to optimize the graphics display alone.

I wonder if Intel at this time didn't have that kind of operation, and whether SIC was the first of its kind.

Of course, today's graphics processors will definitely not be as miniaturized as later generation core displays, and it will not affect the design of the main chip at all.

It takes a lot of effort to integrate this liquid into the SIC, but the price and size are significantly larger, and the power consumption is also rising.

But look at how bulky computers are now. Even if the chip is two times larger, it will still be too big.

As for power consumption, now they are all desktop computers. Laptops have not been born yet, so there is no need to consider power consumption at all.

For computers of that era, SIC dared to toss hard. In future generations, it would probably be sprayed to pieces.

In addition to those features, Fujitsu's FM-7 has also made a qualitative leap in game performance than before.

Don’t forget what is the first application platform of SIC8089? Jiaowang!
To be continued...