Plans cannot keep up with changes.

The arcade factory in Atari, which was originally promised to be manufactured by Jester's father, needs temporary overhaul, which takes about three days.

This suddenly disrupted Jester's entire plan.

After Jester learned the news, he could only curse twice, but he had no other better way.

But he can't afford to delay time. Now he is delayed for three days and another five days in the future. So how can he have time to do things?

His time is too tight now. It is already mid-June in 1984. A year later, the FC of Renhell will invade the United States. If his home computer was not successfully developed, he could not make enough quantities and high-quality games, he would not be able to withstand Renhell's attack at all.

When Jester thought of the huge number of games and the terrifying R&D team of Nintendo and his Big Six, he felt a chill.

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

But the more you understand your opponent, the more Jester feels that your opponent is invincible.

To fight such a powerful opponent, everything requires money, a lot of money, recruiting reliable game designers requires money, recruiting reliable hardware R&D personnel requires money, developing games requires money, and everything in the future requires money.

And my biggest problem now is that I don’t have money.

"American Cubes" is indeed a hen that only lays golden eggs, but it also requires this hen to lay the eggs out.

Jester knew that he couldn't wait. If he seized everything, three days would be enough for him to make at least ten arcade machines with his father.

According to the five units in each city, ten arcade machines can be placed in two cities.

There are only a few large cities in the entire Californian where Jester plans to guide? There are only twelve of them.

Two, one-sixth!

When Jester told his father about his plan, his father completely agreed, and it happened that Mark Seney was also there, and he volunteered to join Jester's plan to make a handmade arcade, especially when he listened to Jester's marketing plan, he was also admired and praised him.

Directly call Jester a genius.

During this period, the "American Cubes" in the Jester Supermarket are still popular. Although there is no spectacular scene of queuing for dozens of meters in the first few days, you still need to queue up to play. It can be said that people are playing this game anytime and at any time.

The daily income of $1,200 to $1,500 per unit has been stable, and I have saved up tens of thousands of dollars these days, so there is no problem in purchasing materials.

If you don’t consider manual labor, the price of the materials is only more than 300 US dollars.

The substrate of this arcade was only specially produced by Jester's father for "American Squares". The configuration is quite low. Apart from a CPU and a few memory chips and the excuses of input and output, there is no special peripheral circuit image processor (PPU), no special sound processor, no noise processor, and only one PCM digital sound generator.

It's really rude.

However, in order to reduce costs, it was a last resort.

Moreover, if you don’t do this, it is very difficult to make an excellent general-purpose substrate with a core 16-bit processor such as 6800 or Z80 in a very short time. However, the circuit architecture of the substrate is enough to allow a large number of hardware engineers to experiment for several months.

Perhaps in the era when Jester was in the future, it might be synonymous with manual soldering of integrated circuit boards, but in the 1980s, this technology was not only a domestic hardware engineer, but also one of the abilities that all engineers engaged in hardware research and development in the world must have.

Jester's father may have inherited the Chinese characteristics of skill. The hand-soldered circuit boards are very excellent. Even in this era when manual-soldered circuit boards are considered basic skills among engineers, his hand-soldered technology is still first-class and powerful.

In fact, the arcade machine looks huge and advanced, but the structure inside is very simple.

It's just an enlarged home gaming console.

Basically, arcades are divided into three parts, and these three parts have been determined when arcades just appeared, and there has been almost no change in the slightest years.

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

These three parts are frames, boards and display equipment.

As the name suggests, Atari's arcade factory originally produced arcade special displays that were upright or oblique, and now there is a large amount of inventory in the warehouse. Jester's father got a lot of them at a very low price.

The frame is also easy to understand. It is the frame outside an arcade machine that supports and protects. Most of the frames are made of plastic, and a small part is made of pure wood.

The composition of the frame does not need to be explained carefully. Anyone who has played it knows clearly. Coin-operated holes, heat dissipation holes, and rocker are all part of the frame.

Before the frame of the arcade equipped with "American Cubes", Jester's father asked someone to customize five. Yesterday, after Jester's plan was made, his father called another hundred. This type of plastic product was made very quickly with molds, and it basically took less than half a day to make these hundred.

And then the board.

To be precise, it should be a substrate or a circuit substrate.

What is a circuit board? As the name implies, it is a circuit board equipped with a circuit.

For example, for example, our computer, the motherboard with all the hardware is the circuit board.

We call it the motherboard in the computer, and it is called the machine board in the arcade.

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

And assemble these three things and form an arcade machine.

Although each has its own division of labor, the tasks of Jester, Mark Seine and Jester's father are still of different importance.

The heaviest task must be Jester's father. In addition to concentrating on hand welding the entire circuit board, he also needs to assemble the arcade frame together.

Of course, Jester and Mark Seney, who are mainly responsible for assembly work, have not had easy tasks. There are many types of arcade frames, and they are also very large, even plastic ones, not light.

For example, the box head is the highest part of the arcades we see. It has the name of the game and the display device is also placed inside. Of course, there are speakers, but this part weighs more than ten pounds.

For example, the frame belly can be said to be the most technical part of the entire arcade except the machine board, because a coin meter used to make money is installed on it, and this part has a total of twenty or thirty kilograms.

The components of similar frames are seven or eight kinds on an arcade machine, all of which weigh more than 200 kilograms.

It is naturally not easy to assemble such heavy parts.

When talking about coin metering, some people may be curious about how coin metering works? Why can’t game coins from other places be used on machines in this game hall?

In fact, the principle is very simple.

There is an integrated block next to the arcade circuit board. This integrated block is responsible for determining whether the coin is successful or not. At the beginning, this integrated block is not connected to the circuit board.

That is to say, this is a break.

The inventor of the coin meter is cleverly designed to connect a thin iron wire to this integrated block. When your coin is put into the coin meter along the guide rail, the game coin will touch the iron wire, and then activate the circuit to generate an electrical signal, which shows a coin.

As for how to distinguish game coins, it is actually simpler. There are mainly two types. One is more advanced. There is a groove on the coin meter, and the mother coin can be placed on it. When you place coins, it will be detected. As for what to detect? The weight of the coin, the material of the coin is detected by cutting the magnetic field, etc.

If it is the same as the mother coin, then pass, enter the rail and touch the wire, activate the circuit. If the detection is not passed, the coin you throw in will be withdrawn. This is called a comparative coin quotation device.

However, this method will be used more in the future. As for now, Jester himself knows that it is not without it in the United States. This kind of coin meter is more expensive and requires a built-in CPU. Generally, only Japanese manufacturers such as Sega Capcom will use it. American manufacturers, such as Atari, still use mechanical coin meter.

Mechanical coin metering devices are much cheaper than comparative coin metering devices, but relatively speaking, their detection levels are much lower.

It can only be judged whether it passes or fails by the thickness, size, weight, iron or non-iron quality of the coin. Therefore, some people can also show that the coin is successfully invested using iron sheets of about the same size and thickness.

With the machine board and frame, the three Jesters are still assembled faster, but they just use the substrate to wire and then assemble the frame with screws.

In just over half a day, Jester and the other three assembled seven machines. The remaining three will definitely be assembled before supper.

The three of them were also very interested and told each other a few jokes from time to time.

Maybe it was a flash of inspiration. In addition to the seven patterns of "American Squares", Jester also wrote the words "This game comes from Mars" ingeniously, and joked that if we start a company in the future, we will use the name Mars Entertainment. Of course, it is also a sure thing to leave a contact number on the frame.

This naturally made his father and Mark Seney laugh.

Originally, Jester planned to find a few of the young people who often go to play "American Cubes" to see if they have free time, recruit a few temporary salesmen, and then ask them to help loosen these arcades in various cities.

Then assure them that they can give these arcades free of charge to the arcade amusement halls, so that they can try them for three days for free, and only discuss the purchase if they think they are good.

As for the benefits generated by this arcade in the past three days, let everyone talk to the arcade hall they contacted. This is their reward, and Jester and the others don’t get any penny.

Jester thought that when he saw these arcades so popular, it would be easy to find someone, because fools know that even half of the profits of five arcades in American Cubes will have nearly 10,000 US dollars in three days. With such a generous reward, who doesn’t want anyone to be a fool.

In fact, the same is true, but there are too many people coming, far beyond Jester's expectations.

As soon as the notice was posted, the applicants lined up in a long queue, but the candidates were not confirmed yet.

Jester's father meant that he would wait for another two days, and it would not be too late to sell the person after he was selected.

Although no one was available, time was too urgent for him, and he could not say too much in detail.

So Jester decided to go to Los Angeles himself. After all, he was studying there, so he was more familiar with it, and he also wanted to see if his plan was feasible.

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

Mark Seney volunteered to say that he could go to San Francisco on his behalf, and joked that the compensation was just the same as in the notice posted by Jester, and said that he actually took a big advantage. After all, a price of 10,000 US dollars is not very common.

When Jester was about to set off the next day, he asked Mark Seney specifically: "Are you interested in joining my game company when you come back?"

Although Jester does not have a company yet, he has decided to register his own company after he comes back from Los Angeles. After all, it feels unreasonable to do things without his own company. As for the name of the company, it is also the Mars Entertainment he joked about before.

This name is quite good to him.

Mark Seney just smiled when he heard this, and said something complaining.

"I've been waiting for you for almost a week. I'm thinking, if you don't look for me again, I'll go to Silicon Valley to see if there is any suitable job for me."

Finally, Mark Seney said to Jester mysteriously: "When I come back, I will give you a surprise."

As for what surprise it was, Mark Seni didn't say anything.

Jester could only set out with doubts.
Chapter completed!