By mid-March, Donghua Technology had made significant progress in the development of USB flash drives.

The specific result is that after Li Hao's hand-mounted USB flash drive was successfully recognized by the machine after being plugged into the computer, a prompt "New device found" appeared.

Next, Li Hao's task is to optimize the design and implement the production process.

At the same time, the software development of USB flash drives is also on the agenda.

Theoretically, a USB flash drive is a memory that does not require a driver, but the corresponding program is still required to achieve better use results.

In fact, the market is really not big enough for selling USB flash drives during this time period.

Why? First, the capacity of flash memory at this time was small. Common ones were 16m, 32m, and 64m. Even 128m flash memory was rare. Because there was no corresponding demand for use, chip manufacturers would not mass-produce them.

The second is the problem of the personal computer operating system version.

In early 1997, the operating system used by most personal computers was Windows 95. This old version of the system did not support USB devices.

In August 1996, Microsoft released a new version of windows95.osr2, commonly known as windows97. This version only supports the USB interface and fat32 file system, and is bundled with ie3.01.

However, this version is an internal release and is only provided to computer sellers as a pre-installed system for new computers. Its CD is not available on the market.

That is to say, unless your computer is a brand machine made after August 1996, it will support USB devices. It cannot be used with the original machine and does not support USB.

The current computer system does not have an online upgrade function, and another version, Windows NT 4.0, does not support the USB interface.

Alas, some programmers are still incompetent, and it will be cracked long ago in later generations.

The third problem is the USB driver.

For a USB flash drive to be used on a computer, two conditions must be met.

The first is the hardware. The most basic one is that the computer uses the universal serial bus and usb socket.

The second is the software. The USB driver is installed in the operating system. The main function of this program is to manage the data transmission between the computer host and the USB device.

Theoretically, the USB flash drive is a driverless storage disk, because in versions after Windows 98, the system comes with a USB driver.

However, in order for the USB flash drive to work more smoothly, it needs to be labeled, which generally includes: device descriptor, configuration descriptor, interface descriptor, endpoint, etc.

When the USB flash drive is inserted into the USB interface, the host can sense that the level of the interface has changed, and then the driver starts to check the USB flash drive, first requiring the device to provide a corresponding description, which is equivalent to checking an ID card.

Therefore, USB flash drive manufacturers often write on the USB flash drive before leaving the factory, where it is produced, which chip is used, the voltage when used, the current, the storage space, etc. This is the device descriptor.

Next, the system will assign an address to the USB flash drive, which is equivalent to assigning a student number to a new student.

Then how to transfer data directly between the USB flash drive and the CPU, where the data starts to be stored as an endpoint, and how to set the root directory area, directory area, and file area of ​​the USB flash drive. You need to edit the boot program and use these programs to identify it more effectively.

Use USB drive.

In later generations, for a period of time, almost every USB flash drive manufacturer would write different programs for its own USB flash drives, and then a universal USB flash drive driver appeared.

By saying this, I am telling all book friends that these drive letters and programs are not available now and need to be completed by the inventor of the USB flash drive.

The task of writing the program is, of course, the responsibility of Zhang Xuedong.

However, programmers are also divided into fields and levels.

Zhang Xuedong's programming level at this time was considered entry-level. He was good at developing management software, which was an application program, including establishing databases, setting up local area networks, conducting data analysis on market prospects in a certain field, and designing the management structure of a certain unit. To put it bluntly,

Yes, it is to provide solutions to specific issues.

Writing programs for USB flash drives belongs to tool software development. The device description, configuration description, port description, etc. mentioned earlier are all unfamiliar to him.

However, Zhang Xuedong also understands the principle of "leaving professional matters to professionals."

Therefore, these days, Zhang Xuedong is not just munching on the Visual C reference book. While Li Hao is working on circuit design, Zhang Xuedong is busy recruiting troops with Luo Hao.

As the vice president of administration of the group, Luo Hao came to Yanjing from Lanshi. His main task was to recruit people for Donghua Technology's Yanjing Company.

Before he arrived, Chen Lidong had already started working and recruited Zhang Xuedong, Li Hao and Wu Jiali.

The author mentioned before that the main business of Yanjing Technology Company is sales, so the skill attribute of the original employees is "sales".

If the company wants to make new achievements in the semiconductor and IT industries, just relying on these few people is far from enough. Chen Lidong’s goal is to fill the entire floor of Xinghai Building.

At least 50 more people will be hired, some of them will work on software and some on hardware.

The skills these people should possess are "writing, writing, writing", which means they are programmers; or "calculating, calculating", which means they are engaged in electronic circuit design.

Zhang Xuedong started programming when he was in college. After spending several years in the Zhongguancun area, he knew some of the programming masters in the circle.

Luo Hao and he have been acting together these days, and they have really recruited a group of capable people.

There were even two people who had some impressions in Chen Lidong's memory.

Both of them have the surname Wu, one is Da Wu and the other is Xiao Wu.

Dawu's name is Wu Jianjun, a native of Shandong Province. He was born in 1947. He is 50 years old this year and belongs to the generation of uncles.

This is considered to be the first generation programmer in China's IT world, a figure who will become a god in later generations, and is known throughout the world as one of the Four Gentlemen in the IT world.

In 1990, Wu Jianjun and four small partners jointly raised funds to open a computer company. By 1993, his company had established more than 20 offices across the country and had more than 200 employees.

What he is most awesome about is not business, but programming. The Chinese operating system he developed was once popular.

In 1994, Wu Jianjun started making computers, and computers branded under his name had a good reputation.

But later, due to poor decision-making and different business philosophies, the five friends had differences.

Last year, Wu Jianjun gave up his position as chairman and left the company. Subsequently, the board of directors was dissolved, leaving the company to two other partners.

Zhang Xuedong heard about his situation and suggested Luo Hao to recruit him.

Luo Hao used to be in charge of human affairs at Lianxiang and had an impression of Wu Jianjun. When he heard that Wu Jianjun had become a free man, he quickly contacted someone and after several discussions, he actually brought this great man back.

The other one is Wu Wentao, who was born in 1973. He began to teach himself programming after graduating from high school, and then moved to Zhongguancun. He was one of the first shareware authors at that time, and he was in the same circle as Zhang Xuedong.

I heard that Donghua Technology was recruiting people, so I took the initiative to inquire with Zhang Xuedong, and Zhang Xuedong pulled me over.

With the participation of these two people, writing a driver for a USB flash drive has become a piece of cake.

Later, several programmers even did a pioneering work under Chen Lidong's prompting, which was to turn the USB flash drive into a system boot disk.

In late March, Donghua USB flash drive already had corresponding functions and met the conditions for being launched on the market.

Therefore, Wang Jiaqi came over again to arrange matters related to patent application, and at the same time applied to the National Trademark Office for USB flash drive and USB flash drive trademark registration.

The inventors of the USB flash drive wrote five: Chen Lidong, Li Hao, Zhang Xuedong and Xiao Xiaowu.

Virgil has purchased a batch of flash memory chips from AMD, both 16m and 32m. The prices per chip are US$18.5 and US$32.5 respectively. This price is much cheaper than two years ago.

Also purchased are USB main control chips, priced at US$10 each.

We have ordered 10,000 pieces of each type of flash memory and 20,000 pieces of main control chips, ready to be shipped to Yanjing by air express.

This is also a big deal, more than 700,000 US dollars in exchange for several packages of silicon wafers.

And Wu Jiali also achieved results.

Yanwu Main Factory has agreed to sell the component factory. Wang Zhiyong has initialed an agreement with the other party and has entrusted a firm to conduct a third-party evaluation. Several other branch factories are also interested in selling, so just take your time.

After assessing the assets of the component factory, Chen Lidong was ready to start renovations and build a patch assembly line.

He promised that Li Hao's SMT series equipment was not available yet, but Li Hao had long forgotten about it. He was busy optimizing the production process of USB flash drives.

Wu Jiali began to work for the employees and sold the factory as a whole. Most of the workers were mentally prepared. Wu Jiali was able to find a good home for everyone, and the sequelae of raising funds for stock trading slowly began to disappear.

On the other side, Zhang Xuedong and Wu Wentao are preparing to lead a group of people to assemble "Donghua" brand personal computers.

According to later statistics, China had nearly 600,000 home computers in 1997, an increase of 260,000 units from 1996.

Among these 600,000 home computers, assembly machines account for a large proportion, about three-quarters.

What are the advantages of assembly machines? They are cheap and easy to upgrade.

At this time, among the Chinese brand computers, Lianxiang had the largest market share, close to 19%, while PAP, IBM, and AST accounted for 17, 13, and 12% respectively. These four brands accounted for 60%.

Other brands include Great Wall, Acer, Founder, and Tongchuang, accounting for 7, 5, 5, and 2 percent respectively.

The remaining 20% ​​of the market share is divided up by a dozen unknown brands, such as Wu Jianjun’s Jianjun Computer.

There are five major parts of a computer: host, monitor, keyboard, mouse, and speakers.

No computer company manufactures all these accessories themselves.

If you are particular about it, design it and entrust the factory to manufacture it.

It's a mixed bag. Just purchase the finished products from various component manufacturers directly and put your own packaging and labels on them.

These are hardware, the mainstream software is the Windows operating system, and branded computers will be authorized by Microsoft.

If it's a no-name brand, just install the cracked version, Zhang Xuedong can do this job.

In the past few days, he and Dawu Xiaowu have been studying how to install the USB device driver in the old version of Windows 95.

Donghua Computer, hardware and software all support the use of USB flash drives.

Chen Lidong asked Zhang Xuedong to pull out a list of host accessories, and he looked at it.

In another life, Chen Lidong also used an office computer in 1997, but he never dared to take it apart and play with it.

After more than ten years, I started playing with mobile phones. Computers are no longer interesting except for working and playing games.

The main hardware of the computer host includes: CPU, memory, motherboard, hard drive, optical drive, sound card, and graphics card.
To be continued...