Back in 1978, I was admitted to Northwestern Polytechnical University.

Chapter 67 IBM, send the money! One hundred thousand dollars!

Inside the chassis, circuit boards were installed one by one, each in the correct order, and every data cable was connected accurately, just as if Qin Liang had actually handled them!
Soon, the main unit was installed. It was a box about the size of a refrigerator. Next to it, there was another box of the same size, labeled IBM 1301.

"That's right, hard drives are also a mainstream standard!" Qin Liang said, plugging in the parallel port cable.

In the 1950s, when its peers were still using magnetic drums and magnetic tapes to store data, IBM invented the hard drive. It was the size of a freezer and had a capacity of only 5 megabytes. Now it has become a smaller hard drive enclosure with a capacity of 20 megabytes and a transfer rate of 156 kilobytes per second. It can't compare with later inventions, but it is absolutely superior to paper tape and printers.

When Skyley saw Qin Liang's hard drive enclosure, a strange glint flashed in his eyes.

On the table next to him, the keyboard and monitor were already in place. Qin Liang sat down and took a deep breath: "Turn it on!"

drop!
After the familiar self-checking sound faded, countless characters began to appear on the screen in front of Qin Liang, eventually resulting in a black screen, a command prompt, and a blinking cursor.

Qin Liang's fingers danced across the keyboard as he typed the first command, dir /a, and pressed Enter!
The following three lines of text indicate the programs already installed: word processing software, programming software, etc.

In the 1970s, Fortran was the best language for numerical and scientific computing. It was geared towards engineers and scientists and provided native support for array and matrix operations. Even today, it remains popular in the scientific community due to its efficient numerical computing capabilities.

Seeing that the Frotran77 editor was available, Qin Liang finally relaxed. Since these guys were playing tricks with the installation, they might also tamper with the computer programs, bundling various application software together for sale. Without the relevant software, the computer would still be unusable.

Thankfully, they don't understand these fancy tricks... Wait, what's this?
Upon seeing the last few hidden files, Qin Liang immediately became interested. One of them was none other than DOS/360?
Back when IBM was developing the System/360 computer, they also wrote the corresponding systems: OS/360 for tape drives and DOS/360 for hard disks! Originally planned to cost $30 million, it ended up costing $500 million and consuming the work of 5,000 person-years!
Even so, there are still many bugs in the operating system! Over the years of computer sales, IBM engineers have been constantly fixing these bugs!

"OH, NO!" Skylar, standing behind Qin Liang, suddenly shouted, "Damn it, who copied our operating system program code here! These hidden files all need to be deleted!"

This operating system was the culmination of their years of hard work; it was IBM's trump card. Why wasn't it deleted beforehand?

"Deleting it is fine, but the program bugs inside can't be fixed."

“How could our IBM operating system possibly have bugs!” Skylar retorted.

"Really? So when the number of end users exceeds 128, some inexplicable error occurs. This isn't a bug, but rather your computer no longer supports it?"

All the IBM technicians were stunned. This Asian man actually knew about their computer malfunction?

Previous computers could only execute single-channel programs. When the program was waiting for I/O, the CPU would be idle. The OS/360 system created the concept of time-sharing: the processor could be shared with other users, so that many users could share a computer and the computer would not be wasted.

For example, a stock exchange only needs one mainframe computer. All the monitors and keyboards at the front desk are essentially terminals of the mainframe computer.

Theoretically, this computer can accommodate up to 256 clients, but no matter how they debug it, it starts to malfunction inexplicably after 128 clients!

Fortunately, the customer had at most a few dozen terminals, rarely hundreds, so the fault didn't actually occur in the customer's hands. However, it was always a ticking time bomb, making the engineers who worked on operating system programs extremely anxious.

Now, does this Easterner in front of me know?
“What caused this error?” Skyri asked.

Qin Liang smiled faintly: "Then you'll have to pay the consulting fee first, one hundred thousand US dollars!"

Everyone present was stunned.

Just moments ago, these Americans were acting all high and mighty, demanding a $10,000 installation fee. And now, Qin Liang is asking them for a $100,000 consulting fee! Skylar frowned: "Let's forget about it then. Let's just delete our operating system program code as soon as possible."

What Qin Liang just mentioned was a bug that only internal testers knew about; the outside world wasn't aware of it. Although it's unclear how Qin Liang found out, this bug is insignificant! Spending $100,000 on this bug?
This is absolutely not worth it!

"Okay, let's delete it then. I'll write a paper tonight and submit it to the journal *Frontiers of Computer Science*. The review process there takes about three months. You guys have three months, so you should be able to fix this bug by now..."

Skyri was stunned.

In the field of computer science, the top-ranked SCI academic journal is *Frontiers of Computer Science*! It has a high level of authority and influence. In particular, it's rumored to be backed by the financial backing of CDC, so any article that exposes defects in IBM products, as long as it can be proven true, will be published!
What's more, it's a core vulnerability in the system!
This guy is threatening me!

This $100,000 could be a consulting fee or hush money; in any case, they have to pay it, whether they want to or not!
"How about this, you use this computer to fix this bug, modify the code and compile it. Once we see that the bug has been fixed, we'll pay you the consulting fee, okay?"

"Alright, then you can go out first!"

go out?

Skelly frowned. "We need to keep an eye on the computer..."

"Just watch, and you'll know how to modify the code! You're clearly trying to cheat!"

"Then we... won't look at the screen, we'll just wait on the other side..."

"Okay." Qin Liang typed away on the keyboard, a minute later.

"All right!"

Is this good?

The Americans were stunned. Fixing a bug might require many people and take a long time, and the bug Qin Liang mentioned had wasted even more of their time and energy. In the end, they couldn't fix it and just left it there. They never expected that this young man from the East would solve it in just one minute?
"I've already started the compiler. After compilation, the machine will reinstall the system and restart. Then you can start testing. Once the bugs are gone, give me the money!"

"it is good!"

Ten minutes later.

A check for $100,000 was placed in Qin Liang's hand, and Skylar spoke up: "Now, can you tell us how you solved it?"

"This check isn't a bounced check, is it?"

"of course not!"

"Okay, I trust my American friends. Come on, let me explain. Line 40326 specifies the terminal type as char. Line 60278 performs a terminal operation, performing an operation between a char and an int. Since they are different types, they should be automatically converted. Logically, it should be converted to int, but an error occurs here. It should be related to a pointer inside the processor..."

(End of this chapter)