Chapter Ten Handicrafts

  Plans can't keep up with changes.

  Jester's father contacted the Atari arcade factory that originally agreed to take over the work, but it temporarily needs a major overhaul, which will take about three days.

  This completely disrupted Jester's entire plan.

  Jester could only curse loudly twice after knowing this news, but he also had no better way.

  Time is what he can't afford to delay, now delaying for three days, in the future will again delay for five days, then when will he have time to do things?

  His time is too pressing now, it's mid-June 1984, and a year later, the FC will invade the US. If his own home computer can't be developed successfully before that, and can't produce enough good quality games, there's no way to defend against the invasion of the Famicom.

  Just thinking about Nintendo and the six giants under its umbrella, with their massive number of games and terrifying development teams, Jester suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

  He clearly understood what kind of terrible opponent he was about to face.

  But the more he understood his opponent, the more Juste felt his opponent's invincibility.

  To counter such a powerful opponent, everything requires money, a large amount of money. Recruiting reliable game designers requires money, recruiting reliable hardware developers requires money, developing games requires money, and all future endeavors require money.

  But now his biggest problem is that he has no money.

  "The American Square" is indeed a hen that only lays golden eggs, but it also depends on the hen to lay them out.

  Jie Si Te knew that he couldn't wait any longer. If he seized every moment, three days would be enough for him and his father to handcraft at least ten arcade machines.

  With five per city, ten arcade machines can be placed in two cities now.

  There are only a dozen or so major cities in all of California that Jester plans to conquer.

  Two is one-sixth!

  When Jester told his father about his plan, his father fully agreed and Mark Sennett was also present, who voluntarily joined Jester's handmade arcade machine plan, especially after hearing Jester's marketing plan, he praised him repeatedly.

  Call Jester a genius directly.

  For some time, the "American Blocks" in Jester's supermarket have been consistently popular. Although there is no longer a queue of dozens of meters like in the first few days, people still need to line up to play, and it can be said that at any moment, someone is playing this game.

  Every day, a stable income of $1,200 to $1,500 per unit, and over the years, tens of thousands of dollars have been accumulated, so there is no problem at all in purchasing materials.

  Making an arcade machine, without considering labor costs, would cost just over $300 in materials.

  The motherboard of this arcade machine was also specially made by Jaleco's father for "American Block" only, with a very low configuration, except for a CPU and several memory chips, input/output ports, there is no dedicated peripheral circuit like PPU, no dedicated sound processor, no noise processor, only one PCM digital sound generator.

  It's really simple to the extreme.

  But in order to compress costs, it is also an inevitable move.

  Moreover, not doing so would make it extremely difficult to produce an excellent general-purpose motherboard with a 16-bit processor like the 6800 or Z80 as its core in a very short period of time. The circuit architecture of the motherboard alone could take a large team of hardware engineers several months to experiment with.

  Perhaps in the future, Jie's generation will still be able to use manual welding of integrated circuit boards. Perhaps it is a synonym for technical houses, but in the 80s, this technology was not only one of the necessary skills for domestic hardware engineers, but also for all hardware R&D engineers around the world.

  Juster's father may have inherited the Chinese trait of being handy, and his handmade circuit boards were excellent. Even in an era where handmade soldering was considered a basic skill for engineers, his soldering skills were top-notch.

  In fact, it looks like a large street machine, seemingly advanced, but the internal structure is very simple.

  It's just an enlarged home game console.

  Essentially, current arcade games are divided into three parts. These three parts were also the standard when arcade games first appeared and have hardly changed over the years.

  And Jester knew that even in the future, these three elements of the arcade would not change much.

  These three parts are the casing, motherboard and display device.

  The display units were literally named as such, Atari's former arcade factory had originally produced upright or slant dedicated arcade monitors and there was still a large inventory in the warehouse, which Jayster's father acquired at very low cost.

  The frame is also easy to understand, it's the skeleton on the outside of an arcade machine, which plays a supporting and protective role. The vast majority of frames are made of plastic, and a small part are made of solid wood.

  The composition of the frame does not need to be carefully explained, and anyone who has played with it knows that the coin slot, heat dissipation hole, and joystick are all part of the frame.

  The cabinet of the arcade machine loaded with "American Block" was previously customized by Jester's father, who had five made. After Jester's plan came out yesterday, his father called to order one hundred more. This type of plastic product can be produced very quickly when a mold is available, and producing this batch of one hundred would take less than half a day.

  And then comes the motherboard.

  To be precise, it should be motherboard, circuit board.

  What is a circuit board? As the name suggests, it's a board that carries a circuit.

  For example, in our computer, the motherboard that carries all the hardware is an electrical circuit board.

  In computers, it's called a motherboard, in arcade machines, it's called a PCB (Printed Circuit Board).

  This is the core of an arcade machine, central processing unit, graphics processing unit, sound processor, memory, video memory, digital sound generator, input/output interface, and even games, all on this seemingly inconspicuous circuit board.

  Assembling these three components together forms an arcade machine.

  Although they each have their own roles, Jester, Mark Xanni and Jester's father still have different levels of responsibility.

  The heaviest task was definitely Jest's father, who had to focus on manually soldering the entire circuit board and also assemble the frame of the arcade machine.

  Of course, Jester and Mark Serny's task of assembling the main work is not easy. There are many types of arcade cabinets, and they are all very large, even if they are plastic, they are not light.

  For example, the header is the highest part of the arcade machine that we see, with the game name marked on it, and the display device is also placed inside. Of course, there are also speakers, but this part alone weighs over ten kilograms.

  For example, the coin box is probably the part with the highest technical content in the entire arcade machine, except for the motherboard. Because the coin acceptor that a street machine uses to make money is installed on this thing, and it weighs at least 20-30 kilograms.

  Similar frame components, on a street machine, there are seven or eight kinds, all of which add up to more than 200 pounds.

  Assembling such heavy parts will naturally not be easy either.

  You might wonder how a coin acceptor works and why game coins from other places can't be used on the machines in this arcade.

  The principle is actually very simple.

  Next to the circuit board of the arcade machine, there is an integrated block that is responsible for determining whether the coin insertion is successful or not. At first, this integrated block was not connected to the circuit board.

  That's what they call a dead end.

  The inventor of the coin acceptor's design was clever in that this integrated block is connected to a thin iron wire. When your coin slides along the guide rail into the coin acceptor, the game coin will touch this iron wire and then activate the circuit, producing an electrical signal, which indicates that a coin has been inserted.

  As for how to distinguish game coins, it's actually simpler. There are mainly two types. One is a bit more advanced and has a recessed slot on the coin inserter where you can place the mother coin. When you insert the coin, it will detect things like the weight of the coin, the material of the coin through magnetic field detection, etc.

  If it is the same as the mother coin, then pass through, enter the guide rail to trigger the iron wire, activate the circuit. If it does not pass the inspection, the coin you put in will be returned. This is called a comparative coin selector.

  However, this method is used more often later on. As for now, Jester himself knows that it's not uncommon in the US, but such coin counters are relatively expensive and require an additional CPU. Generally, only Japanese manufacturers like Sega and Capcom use them, while American manufacturers like Atari still mostly use mechanical coin counters.

  Mechanical coin selectors are much cheaper than comparative coin selectors, but relatively speaking, their detection level is also much lower.

  It can only be determined whether the coin is passed or not by its thickness, size, weight, iron quality or non-iron quality, so some people use iron sheets of similar size and thickness to show successful coin insertion.

  With the motherboard and frame, Jester's three people were still relatively quick to assemble, but it was just a matter of routing through the base plate and then assembling the frame with screws.

  Jester and the other two men assembled seven machines in just half a day, and they would definitely finish assembling the remaining three before dinner.

  The three of them were in high spirits and occasionally exchanged a few jokes with each other.

  Maybe it was a flash of inspiration, but in addition to the seven patterns of "American Blocks" on the promotional stickers posted on the street machines, Jie also came up with the words "This game comes from Mars" and jokingly said that if we start a company in the future, we will use the name Mars Entertainment. Of course, leaving contact information on the frame was also a must.

  This naturally caused his father and Mark Seniha to burst out laughing.

  Jester's original plan was to find a few young people who often played "American Block" and recruit some temporary salesmen with spare time to help send these street machines to various cities.

  Then guarantee them that they will give these arcade machines to those arcade halls for free, and let them try it out for three days for free. If they think it's good, then they can discuss the purchase.

  As for the income generated by this street machine over the past three days, let each person discuss it with their own arcade hall that they are in contact with. That is their reward. Jester and his group do not take a single cent.

  In Jest's mind, given the popularity of these arcade machines, it should be easy to find someone, because even an idiot would know that five "American Block" arcade machines could bring in nearly $10,000 in profit in just three days, or at least half of that. Who wouldn't want such a generous reward?

  It was indeed so, but there were far too many people coming, far beyond Jester's expectations.

  As soon as the notice was posted, a long line of applicants formed, and so far, no one has been selected.

  Jester's father meant to let him wait for two more days and it wouldn't be too late to go and promote after selecting the person.

  Although no one was available, time was really too pressing for him, and he couldn't say too much.

  So Jester decided to go to Los Angeles himself, after all, he studied there and was more familiar with the place, and he also wanted to see if his plan was feasible.

  Although he has verified and thought about it countless times in his heart, this plan is definitely feasible.

  Mark Sennett also volunteered to go to San Francisco, joking that the reward would be just like what was written on Jester's notice, and said that he actually got a good deal, after all, a $10,000 bargain is not often seen.

  On the second day, Jest asked Mark Sennett a sentence while preparing to leave: "Will you be interested in joining my game company when we get back?"

  Jie Si Te hasn't set up a company yet, but he has already decided that after returning to Los Angeles, he will register his own company first. After all, without his own company, it feels like something is missing. As for the name of the company, it's also what he jokingly said before - Huo Xing Entertainment.

  This name still seems pretty good to him.

  Mark Senna listened and just smiled with a hint of resentment, saying a sentence.

  "I've been waiting for you to say that for almost a week now, I was thinking if you didn't look for me, I would plan to go to Silicon Valley to see if there's any suitable job for me."

  Finally, Mark Senna said mysteriously to Jester, "Wait till you get back, I have a surprise for you."

  As for what the surprise is, Mark Sennett didn't say.

  Jester could only set out with doubts.