Diagnostic Port 诊断端口

作者: 安迪·赫茨菲尔德 日期: 1981年7月 人物: 史蒂夫·乔布斯、杰夫·拉斯金、伯勒尔·史密斯、布莱恩·霍华德、史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克、罗德·霍尔特 主题: 硬件设计、管理 概括: 关于苹果第一代Macintosh的开发以及制造它的人的轶事: Burrell 试图加入一些硬件可扩展性

The ability to add new parts to the original Macintosh computer was a very important topic that people argued a lot about. Steve Wozniak, who helped start Apple, believed that it was very important for computers to be able to be expanded. He made the Apple II computer very flexible by adding seven special places where you could put new cards. These cards had software built into them that you couldn’t change. This made it easy to use the Apple II for many different tasks, and it led to many companies making special parts for the computer.

向原始 Macintosh 计算机添加新部件的能力是人们争论很多的一个非常重要的话题。帮助创办苹果公司的史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克 (Steve Wozniak) 认为,计算机的可扩展性非常重要。
他通过添加七个可以放置新卡的特殊位置,使 Apple II 计算机变得非常灵活。这些卡内置了您无法更改的软件。
这使得 Apple II 可以轻松地执行许多不同的任务,并导致许多公司为计算机制造特殊部件。

Jef Raskin had a different idea. He believed that having many slots was confusing and made it hard for many people to understand and use personal computers. He also thought that allowing people to add their own hardware made it harder for computer programmers to write software that worked well. Raskin’s idea for the Macintosh was that Apple would make many simple and affordable computers that were easy to use. He did not think that allowing people to add their own hardware was a good idea because it would make the computers more expensive and complicated.

杰夫·拉斯金有不同的想法。他认为,拥有许多插槽会让人感到困惑,并使许多人难以理解和使用个人计算机。
他还认为,允许人们添加自己的硬件会让计算机程序员更难编写运行良好的软件。
拉斯金对麦金塔电脑的想法是,苹果公司将制造许多简单、价格实惠、易于使用的电脑。他认为允许人们添加自己的硬件不是一个好主意,因为这会让计算机变得更加昂贵和复杂。

Steve Jobs, one of Apple’s founders, didn’t agree with Jobs on many things, but they both agreed that making it easy to add new hardware parts was a problem, not a good thing. Steve didn’t like having slots on the old Apple II computer, and he didn’t like it even more for the Mac. He wanted the Mac to be sealed tight and not have any slots to add new parts. All you could do was use the two special ports to connect your computer to other devices.

苹果公司创始人之一的史蒂夫·乔布斯在很多事情上与乔布斯意见不一致,但他们都同意,让添加新硬件部件变得容易是一个问题,而不是一件好事。
史蒂夫不喜欢旧的 Apple II 电脑上有插槽,他更不喜欢 Mac。
他希望 Mac 能够紧密密封,并且没有任何插槽来添加新部件。您所能做的就是使用两个特殊端口将计算机连接到其他设备。

Burrell Smith, a designer at Apple, and his assistant Brian Howard didn’t agree with Steve’s way of thinking. They wanted to make the Macintosh computer better, but they were worried because it was going to be late. Burrell had seen the schedule get worse and worse, and he didn’t know when the software would be ready. He thought that if the computer was too late, it might not work with the new technology that would be available later. He believed it would be smart to make the computer’s design as flexible as possible, but not too expensive.

苹果公司的设计师伯勒尔·史密斯(Burrell Smith)和他的助手布莱恩·霍华德(Brian Howard)并不同意史蒂夫的想法。
他们想让麦金塔电脑变得更好,但他们担心,因为会晚了。
伯勒尔发现进度越来越糟糕,他不知道软件什么时候能准备好。
他认为,如果计算机出现得太晚,它可能无法与稍后推出的新技术一起使用。
他相信让计算机的设计尽可能灵活是明智之举,但又不会太昂贵。

Burrell thought of a simple way to connect things to his Macintosh computer. He wanted to add just one special door (slot) that would let peripherals talk to the computer’s main processor. This wouldn’t cost much, and if no one used it, it wouldn’t be a waste. Burrell worked out the details and suggested it at a meeting, but Steve said no, telling everyone that the Mac would not even have one slot.

伯勒尔想到了一种将东西连接到他的麦金塔计算机的简单方法。
他只想添加一扇特殊的门(插槽),让外围设备与计算机的主处理器进行通信。这个成本并不高,如果没有人用的话,也不算浪费。
伯勒尔制定了细节,并在一次会议上提出了建议,但史蒂夫拒绝了,他告诉大家,Mac 甚至没有一个插槽。

Burrell didn’t give up easily. He thought, “The Mac won’t have a ‘slot’, but maybe we can call it something else instead.” He talked to Brian about it and they decided to call it a “diagnostic port” instead. They thought this would be cheaper to make if testers could use it to find mistakes in the manufacturing process. They didn’t mention that this port would also do the same job as a “slot”.

伯勒尔并没有轻易放弃。他想,“Mac 不会有‘插槽’,但也许我们可以用别的名字来代替。”他与布莱恩谈论了此事,他们决定将其称为“诊断端口”。
他们认为,如果测试人员可以用它来发现制造过程中的错误,那么制造成本会更便宜。
他们没有提到这个端口也可以完成与“插槽”相同的工作。

At first, people liked the idea. But after a few weeks, the engineering manager, Rod Holt, found out what was going on. He probably figured it out because people would sometimes laugh when the special port was mentioned. Rod finally said to us at a meeting, “You’re trying to trick me by using a slot, aren’t you? Well, that’s not going to work!”

起初,人们喜欢这个想法。但几周后,工程经理罗德·霍尔特 (Rod Holt) 发现了发生了什么事。
他大概已经猜到了,因为提到特殊港口时人们有时会大笑。
罗德最终在一次会议上对我们说:“你们想用老虎机来欺骗我,不是吗?好吧,那是行不通的!”

Even though one way to add new computer parts was stopped, it wasn’t the end of trying to secretly make the computer better. When the computer’s main board was redesigned in August 1982, the next type of memory chip was already coming out. The Mac had 16 small memory chips, which together gave it 128,000 units of memory. The next type of memory chip was bigger, with 256,000 units, which made a big difference and gave us 512,000 units instead. This made a big difference.

尽管添加新计算机部件的一种方法被停止,但这并不是秘密改进计算机的尝试的结束。
当 1982 年 8 月重新设计计算机主板时,下一代存储芯片已经问世。
Mac 有 16 个小型内存芯片,总共提供了 128,000 个单位的内存。
下一种类型的内存芯片更大,有 256,000 个单元,这产生了很大的变化,给了我们 512,000 个单元。这产生了很大的不同。

Burrell thought the 128K Mac would not be good enough soon after it came out, and users couldn’t add more memory themselves. He noticed that he could easily make the computer use 256K RAM chips by just adding a few extra connections on the main board. This would allow brave people who knew how to fix things to replace their RAM chips with the new ones. It would only cost a few cents to do this.

Burrell 认为 128K Mac 刚推出不久就不够好,用户无法自行添加更多内存。
他注意到,只需在主板上添加一些额外的连接,就可以轻松地让计算机使用 256K RAM 芯片。
这将允许那些知道如何修复问题的勇敢的人用新的 RAM 芯片替换他们的 RAM 芯片。
做到这一点只需要花费几美分。

But Steve Jobs didn’t like the idea of customers opening their computers and changing things inside. He thought it would be better if they bought a new Mac with more storage instead. However, this time the person in charge, Burrell, let the change stay because it was very small. Steve didn’t find out about it, and this actually turned out to be a good thing for customers, because they didn’t have to buy a whole new Mac to make their computer work better.

但史蒂夫·乔布斯不喜欢客户打开电脑并改变里面的东西的想法。
他认为如果他们购买一台具有更多存储空间的新 Mac 会更好。
不过,这次负责人伯勒尔却让这个改动留下来,因为改动很小。
史蒂夫没有发现这一点,而这实际上对客户来说是一件好事,因为他们不必购买全新的 Mac 来让他们的电脑运行得更好。
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