"Not needed?" For the first time, a crack appeared on Su Xuan's smile. He thought he had misheard. "How can analog signals be encoded and transmitted without being converted into digital pulse sequences? You..."
"Direct sampling".
Mingzhao interrupted him, her tone as indifferent as if she were saying, "Dinner's ready."
"Raw signal, high-speed sampling, quantization encoding. Skip the analog front-end."
"High-speed sampling?!"
Su Xuan's voice rose a few decibels, filled with disbelief, "Do you know how demanding high-speed sampling is on clock frequency and sample-and-hold circuitry? With the equipment the institute currently has..."
His gaze swept over the makeshift tools and disassembled parts on the lab bench, the meaning of which was clear: this was utterly absurd!
"Use this as the clock source."
Mingzhao casually picked up a dusty quartz crystal oscillator module that he had salvaged from an abandoned military radio and tossed it onto the table.
"Frequency stability is sufficient. Sample-and-hold circuit,"
She pointed to a small, ugly box next to her, which she had soldered herself using vacuum tubes, capacitors, and inductors. "I made it myself."
Su Xuan stared wide-eyed at the dusty vibrator and the ugly "box"!
Using such a low-grade, primitive oscillator as a clock source for high-speed sampling? Building your own sample-and-hold circuit using vacuum tubes?
This isn't just bold, this is downright... insane!
He could almost foresee the terrifying noise and distortion!
"Comrade Mingzhao,"
Su Xuan took a deep breath, trying to remain calm and composed.
"Theoretical possibility is one thing, engineering implementation is another! Such a solution would have an error rate so high that it would be unusable! It's simply impossible to produce a usable prototype in three months!"
His tone carried the inherent rigor of an overseas returnee elite and a hint of barely perceptible superiority.
Mingzhao finally raised her head and glanced at him.
His gaze was calm and unwavering, yet it gave Su Xuan a strange feeling of being looked down upon.
"Your problem stems from the limitations of our current understanding of Earth's technology."
Mingzhao's voice was flat and even, as if stating an objective fact: "The solution is feasible. The error rate is controllable."
She stopped explaining, picked up the heated soldering gun, and began soldering components onto a new copper-clad board. Her movements were steady and precise, with a cold, mechanical beauty.
What Earth? What's wrong with Earth's technology?
Aren't you from Earth?
Su Xuan was speechless at the phrase "Earth's technology tree." Looking at Ming Zhao's completely confident posture, as if he were assembling an ordinary toy, a strong sense of frustration and an even stronger curiosity surged up.
He stopped talking, just crossed his arms, leaned against the table, and stared intently at Mingzhao's every move, trying to find a flaw in her actions, or... a miracle.
Time passed amidst the hissing of the soldering torch and the flashing green light on the oscilloscope.
In the afternoon, Li Weiguo, head drooping, slowly shuffled into the laboratory carrying a heavy wooden box.
The box was placed on the ground with a thud, kicking up a cloud of dust.
"Here... the 'parts' you wanted!"
Li Weiguo's voice was filled with resentment and a hint of schadenfreude, "We searched the entire warehouse and this is all we found! KT-74B modules? Here, they're all here! And that broken board from the 'Dongfeng-3' thing, here, take it all!"
He kicked the box, inside were several old communication modules covered in oil and with broken casings, and several discarded circuit boards with charred edges and covered in dust, some of the densely packed components on them had already fallen off.
Although Wang Ai and Chen Songnian did not come in person, their "cooperative" attitude was full of ulterior motives: "Here's your garbage, let's see how you use it!"
Mingzhao put down the welding torch, walked to the box, and squatted down.
Su Xuan also frowned and came over to look, and the contents of the box made him frown even more.
"Why did you send this kind of material? Is this some kind of targeting of Comrade Mingzhao?"
Li Weiguo also looked down on this new mixed-race person; he looked like a foreigner and didn't seem like a good person at all.
"What? Comrade Mingzhao himself said that even scrap metal can be used to make good things. I did this strictly according to Comrade Mingzhao's requirements."
These components are of such poor quality that they do not meet the requirements for precision circuits at all!
Mingzhao, however, seemed not to notice the oil stains and damage.
Her slender fingers reached directly into the box, her movements precise and swift, like the most sophisticated robotic arm.
Ignoring the damaged casings, she directly pried off several transistors, resistors, and capacitors of specific models. From those broken "Dongfeng-3" boards, she precisely disassembled the high-precision resistor array and several special-specification capacitors that Su Xuan had mentioned, which were used for key positions in AD conversion.
Her movements were so fast it was dazzling, as if the complex circuits and solder joints were transparent to her.
She casually placed the disassembled parts on a clean cloth beside her, the oil and dust leaving marks on her fair fingers, but she didn't care at all.
Su Xuan's eyes widened. He recognized several key resistors that Ming Zhao had removed; these were military-grade components with extremely high precision requirements, strictly controlled even by foreign countries!
She actually... managed to precisely identify and disassemble these components by hand from these abandoned junkyards? What kind of terrifying memory and insight into the components must that require?
This completely overturned his understanding of electrical engineering!
“These…the parameters of these components require precise measurement and matching…” Su Xuan couldn’t help but remind him, his voice a little hoarse. Even if they were disassembled, parameter drift would still be a major problem.
Mingzhao had already stood up and walked to her workbench with the few precision resistors and capacitors she had removed.
Instead of using a multimeter, she picked up a homemade, simple bridge made from an old meter head, quickly connected the wires, and turned a few rough knobs.
She put the watch down after the hands swung a few times.
"Error, within 0.3%. Usable." She announced the result in a calm tone, as if she were merely confirming today's weather.
Su Xuan was completely speechless.
He watched as Mingzhao picked up those oily parts that she had just dug out of the garbage dump, and without hesitation began to install them onto the core signal processing board that she was soldering, using solder wire and a soldering gun!
The movements were fluid and confident, without the slightest hesitation, as if those parts were not scrap but brand new products that had just come off the production line!
Absurd! Insane! Yet... it possesses a suffocating power!
Su Xuan looked at Ming Zhao's focused profile and at her steady fingers, which were covered in oil stains.
Watching her tackle what he considered an impossible task with a pile of real "garbage".
The doubt and disdain in his heart were being replaced by a strong sense of awe and an indescribable attraction.
He desperately wanted to know what kind of world was in her mind.
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