Chapter 369 8M USB flash drive, priced at 488
A few days later, Cheng Xiaohua brought a man with a Mediterranean hairstyle to appear in front of Lu Yiming.
Lu Yiming raised his head and glanced at the other person's bald head, and was immediately in awe. This was obviously the hairstyle of a strong man, which meant that his hair was not completely lost, otherwise his strength would definitely be even stronger.
Cheng Xiaohua introduced Lu Yiming enthusiastically, "Mr. Lu, this is my classmate Fang Yunfeng from the Xiake Institute. He graduated from the National University of Defense Technology with a major in computational mathematics and applied software, and obtained a master's degree from the Xiake Institute's Computer Center. He is extremely talented and his abilities are unquestionable."
Fang Yunfeng didn't say anything, but simply nodded at Lu Yiming. His expression was cold and not enthusiastic at all. It was obvious that he was a tech geek who didn't like to have interpersonal relationships.
Cheng Xiaohua was afraid that Lu Yiming would misunderstand, so she quickly explained to him: "Mr. Lu, don't misunderstand. Old Fang treats everyone like this."
Lu Yiming waved his hand nonchalantly, obviously not taking Fang Yunfeng's indifference to heart. Instead, he smiled and said, "I have always respected scientific research talents. Besides, I paid you to come back, not to listen to your flattery. I just want you to make achievements, and I don't care about anything else."
This was an impolite remark, but it won the favor of Cheng Xiaohua and Fang Yunfeng.
They are all technology fanatics, especially Fang Yunfeng. Apart from scientific research, he is indifferent to other things. When he was in Xiake Institute, he offended many people because of this kind of character, so he did not have a very satisfactory life.
If Cheng Xiaohua hadn't pulled him over, Fang Yunfeng would probably still be sitting on the bench in his original research institute.
Lu Yiming's statement made the two of them see Lu Yiming's heroic spirit of "recruiting talents regardless of their background".
"Don't worry, Mr. Lu. We will do our best to achieve results as soon as possible."
"That's good."
Lu Yiming attached great importance to the USB flash drive project, so after Cheng Xiaohua gathered all the people, he did not give up.
The main reason is that time is tight and all the boasting has been released. If we fail to produce a mature and usable product within half a year, we will not be able to explain to Zheng Youyuan.
After all, Lu Yiming and Zheng Youyuan had said before that the USB flash drive was almost ready for production, but in reality, those drawings were just casually drawn by Lu Yiming based on his memory of the USB flash drive, and there was not even a hint of a product that could be brought to the market.
Of course, this is not a scam. After all, the technology of USB flash drives is not difficult. What is difficult is just the idea.
Lu Yiming asked: "Director Cheng, regarding the research and development of this USB flash drive, where do you plan to start?"
As the newly appointed technical director of Mingyuan Technology, Cheng Xiaohua couldn't help but scratch the back of his head, with a helpless expression: "I don't have any . I checked the information, and currently on the market, there is only one product from Aimon Company that meets your needs."
The world's first flash-based, non-volatile solid-state drive was developed by Amon in 1995.
This can be considered the predecessor of the USB flash drive, but its actual functions are still quite different from the USB flash drive described by Lu Yiming.
Lu Yiming was not surprised by this. Cheng Xiaohua had good scientific research ability, but his business acumen was not so good. Moreover, because he was obsessed with scientific research, he was not very sensitive to market changes.
Simply put, it is not easy for him to find the right research direction, at least he doesn't know what to research so that he can immediately produce a product and make money.
In scientific research, direction is often more important than method, because only when you are in the right direction, your efforts will be meaningful. Otherwise, no matter how hard you try, it will be in vain.
Seeing that Cheng Xiaohua was still confused, Lu Yiming took out a product that had just been launched in South Korea and placed it in front of him: "Take a look at this."
"What's this?"
Cheng Xiaohua looked curiously at the thing in Lu Yiming's hand that looked like a miniature pager.
Lu Yiming smiled and explained, "This thing is called an MP3 player, and it's a player that can play music files. It's similar to a Walkman, but it doesn't require discs or tapes, and you can store songs directly."
The little gadget in his hand is the world's first MP3 player, MPManF10, which was launched in 1998 by Saehan, a subsidiary of Samsung.
It was expensive and had rubbish functions, but it was a groundbreaking product after all, so Lu Yiming asked someone to buy more than a hundred of them from South Korea, originally intending to give them as gifts.
Cheng Xiaohua was greatly surprised, and at the same time he understood why Lu Yiming gave him such a product as a reference.
MP3 and USB flash drive are very similar in basic functions. It can even be said that MP3 is a USB flash drive that can be used to play music.
Of course, the storage principles of the two are different and cannot be completely equated.
However, for a technical genius like Cheng Xiaohua, the inspiration provided by Lu Yiming was more than enough for him.
He stared at the MP3 player in Lu Yiming's hand and asked expectantly, "Can this thing be disassembled?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, “Of course, just take it apart, I bought a bunch.”
Seeing Lu Yiming being so generous, Cheng Xiaohua did not hesitate to ask Fang Yunfeng to dismantle the four MP3 players for analysis and research.
Especially the flash memory chip in the MP3, if it is slightly modified, it can become a USB flash drive.
Over the next three weeks, after working day and night, the two finally found a solution that was theoretically feasible.
They used the flash memory chips removed from the MP3 players, designed the circuits themselves, and then soldered on the corresponding components and USB interfaces themselves. They came up with a gadget with a capacity of 8MB and which can be "plug and play".
The world's first true USB flash drive was born!
At Baiyun No. 1 Middle School, the peaceful school life continues.
Lu Yiming and Shi Qingxue sat at the edge of the playground, sharing a pair of headphones and listening to Jacky Cheung's songs together.
The breeze is gentle and the years are peaceful.
When Lu Yiming was enjoying himself, a noise came from his earphones, and the two of them hurriedly pulled them off.
"This noise is terrible."
Shi Qingxue frowned and looked at the MP3 in her hand, feeling a little bad.
She kept pressing the buttons here and there, but the sound in the headphones became louder and louder. She suddenly felt unhappy: "Why is this thing broken?"
She still liked this gift very much. After all, she liked listening to music, and it was given to her by Lu Yiming.
I just didn't expect it to break down so quickly.
Lu Yiming comforted her and said, " Bangkok's products are like this. If they break, they break. As long as they don't explode, that's fine."
Shi Qingxue was still a little annoyed, and pounded the broken MP3 in her hand a few times: "I've only listened to half of this song."
Seeing this, Lu Yiming smiled and said, "I recently opened a new company. I will customize an MP3 player for you in the future. I guarantee it will be easy to use and durable. Throw this thing away and let's go to class."
At this time, Cheng Xiaohua called. As soon as Lu Yiming answered the phone, Cheng Xiaohua said excitedly, "Mr. Lu, we have made the USB drive you asked for!"
After school, Lu Yiming naturally rushed to Mingyuan Technology's headquarters as soon as possible.
In the brightly lit laboratory, Cheng Xiaohua immediately showed him the finished sample. The world's first flash drive lay quietly in the palm of his hand.
Because it is a laboratory product, it does not even have an outer shell, it is just casually wrapped in transparent plastic.
Lu Yiming did not dislike the ugly packaging, but asked excitedly: "How big is the storage capacity?"
"8M."
"So small?"
When Lu Yiming heard this, he was immediately dissatisfied.
In later generations, any memory card starts at 16G, so what the hell is this 8M?
Although Lu Yiming was not very satisfied with this first-generation product, looking at Cheng Xiaohua's messy hair that hadn't been washed for several days, Lu Yiming didn't say much.
After all, during these three weeks, Cheng Xiaohua and Fang Yunfeng both lived and ate in the laboratory. Their daily work was to write programs, crack the core technology of memory cards, reorganize them step by step, and make progress bit by bit.
Two computers alone broke down, and the amount of calculated data and manufacturing drawings drawn were innumerable. This led to a breakthrough in flash drive technology, which led to the successful launch of the world's first USB flash drive.
For now, we can only solve the problem from nothing to something, and then think about the problem from little to more.
Lu Yiming found a small box lined with sponge and put the world's first USB flash drive into it.
Looking at the little gadget in his hand, Lu Yiming couldn't help but feel ambitious. With the advent of the Internet age, the application scope of USB flash drives is quite wide. Even if you don't directly produce products for sale, you can make a lot of money just by "collecting rent".
In the world before rebirth, Langke relied on the patented technology of USB flash drives to sue people for money, and finally even became the landlord of Penguin.
Relying on the high patent fees, Langchao built a Langchao Building directly in Pengcheng as the group's headquarters.
However, although the Langchao Building is as high as 19 floors, Langchao only uses four floors. The rest are rented by Penguin at a price of 40 million yuan per year. The company lives a very happy life.
Lu Yiming took several photos from various angles and planned to release them to the public at an appropriate time.
Fortunately, he had foresight and had applied for invention patents for the USB flash drive long ago, not only domestically, but also internationally. Now that the product has been made, he is not panicking at all. As long as the patent is approved, all products around the world that use this mobile flash memory technology will have to pay him patent fees!
There were many cases in the 1980s and 1990s when the country suffered losses due to the lack of attention to patents. The most famous one was Wan Yan's VCD, which was a case of one wrong move leading to a complete loss.
Just because the founder Jiang Wanmeng did not pay attention to patent registration, his rising business empire collapsed overnight and he missed out on a market worth tens of billions of dollars.
Lu Yiming encouraged them, "You have done a great job. This quarter's bonus will be increased by 100,000 yuan each. Keep researching and try to increase the storage capacity to 8G or even 1T. The current deposit and withdrawal speeds are still too slow, and the memory capacity is too small. These are areas that need improvement. I can continue to invest 10 million yuan in it."
When Cheng Xiaohua heard that Lu Yiming was willing to continue investing money in scientific research, he immediately agreed happily. He had been worried that after the flash drive was made, Lu Yiming would no longer make additional investments.
Now that he saw that Lu Yiming attached so much importance to research and development, he was filled with admiration.
This boss understands technology and is willing to spend money, so he's a good guy.
After leaving the lab, Lu Yiming took the world's first USB flash drive to Zheng Youyuan and proudly showed it to him, "How is it? I told you it would be ready soon. This is the prototype. Currently, it can store three to four songs or five million Chinese character documents."
Zheng Youyuan didn’t feel anything about the three or four songs, but the five million Chinese characters really shocked him.
"Five million Chinese characters! Wouldn't that fill an entire Chinese dictionary?"
A Chinese dictionary is as big as two bricks. Now it can be put into such a small thing?
Zheng Youyuan felt that this was not technology, this was magic.
"It's only been a month, and you've already made something? Isn't that too fast?"
Lu Yiming smiled and said, "Wouldn't it be better if we could produce results soon?"
Zheng Youyuan looked at Lu Yiming with a smile on his face: "The main reason is that you did this. I am not mentally prepared at all. It's hard to arrange the birth in such a short period of time."
Lu Yiming had a smug look on his face, laughing non-stop: "This is how scientific research works. I can't accurately predict when the results will come out."
The USB flash drive in the previous life encountered many difficulties at the beginning. After all, Deng Guoshun, the father of the USB flash drive at that time, had only a few hundred thousand in start-up capital, which was the hard-earned money he earned from working hard. Whether it was equipment, resources or scientific research environment, it could not be compared with the objective conditions provided by Lu Yiming to Cheng Xiaohua.
In addition, Lu Yiming also pointed out the right direction to Cheng Xiaohua, which saved him many detours. Therefore, the original scientific research practice of about one year was shortened to one month.
I can only say that spending money is really awesome.
Lu Yiming reminded Zheng Youyuan, "There is still a month before the Chinese New Year. I have designed several classic keychain designs for this thing. You should arrange for production as soon as possible and try to launch it on the market on New Year's Day. There are mainly two styles, one is 8m, priced at 488 yuan, and the other is 16m, priced at 888. Take advantage of the Chinese New Year to sell it for 1.8 million yuan."
Seeing Lu Yiming speak so easily, Zheng Youyuan couldn't help but complain: "It's nearly 500 yuan a piece, and you still sell it for 1.8 million? After all, USB flash drives are new things, and it will take time for people to accept them."
However, Lu Yiming knew better than anyone how popular USB flash drives were in the world.
After all, before his rebirth, he bought USB flash drives in batches of dozens of dollars. He used one USB flash drive for each project, and they were classified into different categories. It was so comfortable.
Zheng Youyuan was still a little worried: "Should we find a TV station to advertise?"
Lu Yiming thought about it and nodded: "Advertising is fine, but advertising alone is not enough."
Zheng Youyuan immediately asked: "Then what do you want?"
Lu Yiming smiled leisurely: "Mr. Zheng, have you forgotten that I am still a major shareholder of Jianlai Technology? USB flash drives are meant to be used with computers. In this case, we can directly organize an event to give away USB flash drives when you buy a computer to promote it. And I can also launch a batch of customized computer cases without optical drives. Next year is the Year of the Rabbit, and we can have a limited edition for the Year of the Rabbit... There are so many ways to play."
