Time was too tight, so Xing Baohua's sales plan would have to wait until next time. He only got a few orders on the electronics street, and the quantities weren't large; he'd hand them over to Yang Jing to process later.

The procurement trip concluded successfully, costing over 300 million yuan, with Xing Baohua contributing 40%.

All the manufacturers are grateful to Xing Baohua and said they would treat him to a proper meal when they visit their areas.

The favor has been repaid. When the time is right, Xing Baohua will have to get it back with interest.

After returning to China, this procurement also caused some problems, such as the fact that when provincial or other ministries sent delegations to go abroad for inspection, they would first send Xing Baohua an invitation letter.

Is he really being treated like a god of wealth or just a sucker?

The most disgusting thing is the oil department. Tell me, you sell all the oil you extract, how come you don't have any foreign exchange in hand?

If Xing Baohua remembers correctly, this department is one of the richest in the country, no, it should be the richest.

I brought back some trinkets from Japan.

Dismantle it, dismantle it and study it.

Xing Baohua wanted to combine the game console with the learning machine.

Forget about the domestic version; we have to stick to that line. The export version is a must; we have to train overseas kids to be gaming geniuses.

I brought back a few Sony Walkmans and a dozen or so pairs of headphones. Let's see how they manufacture them. They look simple when you take them apart, but the difference in manufacturing processes is huge.

This kind of basic thing is missing more than a little bit.

Just like the little round ball inside a ballpoint pen refill. After 2000, it couldn't be produced domestically and had to be imported.

So, in terms of precision machining, we're completely controlled by others. We started developing CNC technology relatively early, but is that enough? We're still several generations behind the West.

We can manufacture the mechanical parts of triple, quadruple, and quintuple units in a matter of seconds, but we can't develop the CNC software and hardware.

Very few people understand this; one must be proficient in both hardware and software.

Xing Baohua wanted to try the software part, but the rest still needed to be improved by others. It was a huge system that required the collaboration of several departments and companies.

Why did he suddenly decide to give it a try? Because he couldn't buy it. Xing Baohua just wanted to carve a frame, who would believe that?

That's a waste of money.

The most valuable item I brought back from RB was the HP PC-5000 laptop.

The use of "pc" in the name clearly indicates that this is a real computer.

This thing weighs about six or seven pounds and is foldable. Xing Baohua turned it on and checked it on the plane.

The CPU is an 8086 processor, and it uses the MD-DOS operating system.

As a portable computer, it only has a 4-hour battery life and uses 10 AA batteries.

Unfortunately, I could only test its performance on the plane at the time.

Now that I'm home, I'm taking it apart to look at the internal structure. It's a very compact and sophisticated integrated circuit.

Reverse engineering is not difficult, and manufacturing is not difficult either. Now, with industrial robotic arms and fully automatic spot welding machines, motherboard components can be manufactured in batches through programming.

Inside the motherboard slots, the only thing Xing Baohua couldn't understand was why there were two ROM card slots designed.

Is this a setup for future upgrades? It's not a desktop computer; designing card slots takes up too much space! Why not just solder it directly onto the motherboard?

The display uses a 9-inch monochrome screen.

Xing Baohua recalled reading a magazine report that said Toshiba was the only company that truly made a PC-like laptop.

But in Japan, they're all called laptops.

The one Xing Baohua is holding was launched by HP in 1983.

Its performance is just so-so. Even if it were a little better, what could it do? The current configuration is sufficient for programming. To put it bluntly, Xing Baohua's knock-off learning machine is about the same as this.

It's cheap, but you can still write programs, right?

Laptops cost over two thousand US dollars. If Xing Baohua were to develop and manufacture them himself, he could reduce the cost by three hundred US dollars.

This machine has an expansion port, which can connect to devices such as floppy drives or recording storage devices.

If you want to catch up with the world, you need to bring out a real computer.

Xing Baohua could manage to make do with everything else, but the only difficult thing was the LCD screen.

There are only one or two companies in the country that can produce it, and they have plenty of orders.

One of the companies even helped Xing Baohua produce pager screens.

It's not that Xing Baohua doesn't want to roll up his sleeves and compete with foreign manufacturers, but there isn't a single domestic company that can compete.

Report the dense dot matrix LCD screens you need to the relevant ministries and let them worry about it. You've spent so much money helping the ministries, so they should at least take care of this little thing for you.

The first requirement is a 320x120 dot matrix LCD screen. Xing Baohua will take care of whoever can produce it.

Even if equipment upgrades are needed, he can help with the foreign exchange payments.

Anyway, the money is still mine. I might even make a little profit; it's just helping them exchange currency.

The laptop still needs to be designed; we can't wait until all the parts are ready before designing it.

Now there are alloy factories, and all products will use lightweight aluminum alloy. Unfortunately, the frame is difficult to make and can only be welded, which adds several processes and increases costs.

We have already contacted the provincial machine tool factory, and they are focusing their efforts on developing precision CNC machine tools.

China's CNC machine tools are among the best in the world, but they are not very precise.

For example, the small screws on a pager can't be pulled out by our machine tool cutter. We especially need to control the screws to a depth of 1-3 microns.

This forced Xing Baohua to use larger screws on the pager.

Smaller screws need to be imported from Japan. Xing Baohua felt it was unnecessary; why spend that money? He'd make do with what he had.

If the screws are a bit larger, Chinese people won't say anything. Even foreigners would just marvel at how practical we are and how good the materials are.

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