Chapter 1923 - Mechanical Computer

"Is it entirely mechanical this time?" Ai Zhixin asked with visible concern. To be honest, he wasn't reassured by the combination of "mechanical" and "computer." The Finance Department had used several hand-cranked mechanical calculators. On the whole, the results were barely satisfactory. Aside from being clunky, oversized, and ugly, they frequently malfunctioned. Still, he had to admit that even in their unreliable state, their efficiency far surpassed manual calculation with an abacus.

"There are also some electronic computers," Feng Nuo said, hesitating slightly when he mentioned the term. What he called an "electronic computer" had been cobbled together by the IT department using stockpiled microcontrollers and other salvaged components. For most people, a pile of messy circuit boards hardly qualified as a "computer."

"That's good, then. The hand-cranked calculators we use in the Finance Department are just passable, but the failure rate is abysmal," Ai Zhixin shook his head. "Of course, they're still much faster than clerks with abacuses, but they can't automatically summarize. Without statistical functions, we still have to manually consolidate and fill in forms. The margin for error there is massive."

The more hands numbers passed through, the greater the probability of error.

"That's why what we brought this time is a 'computer,' not a 'calculator,'" Feng Nuo said. "Where will our office be located? This set of equipment isn't small."

"Director Liu's opinion is that your office should be temporarily located in the Big World. As for the Computing Center itself—there are plenty of houses in Guangzhou city, but most decent ones are government offices or temples, all over a hundred years old. Many have leaking roofs and mold, and there are swarms of rats and insects. They're not suitable for housing precision equipment. So the plan is to put it in the Guangzhou New District on Henan Island."

It was no secret that Henan Island was planned to become Guangzhou's new urban core. The planning maps had long been released. In a sense, all the agencies currently working in the old city were merely "temporary."

"How long will it take to build the computer room on Henan Island?" Feng Nuo asked, clearly concerned.

"The computer room is basically finished, but the conditions on Henan Island are still relatively primitive. It's essentially a large rural village," Ai Zhixin said. "Though honestly, I think it's quite good. Guangzhou city is currently being dug up everywhere, so it's not much better than the countryside."

Feng Nuo and his colleagues had little interest in this medieval city anyway—especially after seeing the notifications about plague outbreaks. They felt absolutely no nostalgia for the old city of Guangzhou. Hearing that the computer room was already built, they immediately expressed readiness to move there the next day.

"Don't rush," Ai Zhixin waved his hand. "Rest for a few days in the Big World first."

After seeing off Ai Zhixin, Feng Nuo and Xu Laowu found themselves with little to do. They had "rested" enough on the boat—basically sleeping as soon as they boarded, and even when they couldn't sleep, they just lay there. Now was a good time to stretch their muscles, so they walked and chatted through the inner sanctum of the Big World, discussing their vision for the future Southern Computing Center.

"Speaking reasonably, this computing center should be equipped with servers. After all, Guangzhou will be our capital for the next few years. Will this thing really work?" Xu Yicheng finally voiced what he had been thinking all along.

The computing center Xu Yicheng managed in Lingao ran largely on servers from the old timeline. Though he wasn't a professional hardware technician, he was well aware of the enormous generational gap between electronic and mechanical computers. This machine—touted as the first practical mechanical computer manufactured by the Senate—fell far short in computing power not only compared to the world's first electronic computer, ENIAC, but even compared to the mechanical relay computer designed by the German Zuse.

Xu Yicheng had participated in the development process of this computer in Lingao. Looking at it objectively, he felt it should at least be upgraded to a relay computer to have genuine practical value.

"Actually, we don't have many usable servers left—not counting the systems sealed for backup at Gaoshanling—and you know those systems can't possibly be put into daily use."

The final backup system at Gaoshanling was the last resort for preserving and accessing the vast ocean of data in the Great Library. The Senate hoped to use it to survive the looming "Dark Age" of computers. It wouldn't be touched now under any circumstances.

"Our IT department has a plan to build computing servers using ARM processors. The Planning Commission has a shipping container full of those reserves. It will be no problem to use them until the day we can replicate vacuum tube or transistor computers. The key bottleneck is that our peripherals are dying."

Keyboards, mice, monitors, hard drives, printers—all of it had finite lifespans, and the Planning Commission's reserves were not inexhaustible.

Without peripherals, servers were meaningless. And now the demand for data processing was expanding exponentially. Just from the perspective of census and household registration alone, the expansion of data processing volume brought by the conquest of Guangdong had increased by orders of magnitude.

"So we can only use punched cards?"

"Exactly," Feng Nuo confirmed. After speaking, he fell into deep thought, his mind returning to the bumpy journey of developing this computer.

Ten months ago.

"...PR14 is not conducting. Dr. Zhong, good news—it's just a current-limiting resistor that's broken. I should have a spare..." Feng Nuo stood up from his chair and walked to an iron cabinet in the corner of the room. The cabinet rested on what appeared to be a new white wood table, its height exactly level with Feng Nuo's upper body. Zhong Lishi saw that the cabinet was about half a meter high, half a meter deep, and one meter long. Much of the surface paint had peeled off, though the handle was polished to a shine, and the keyhole sat in the middle of the double doors. It looked like junk salvaged from the Fengcheng—probably originally a storage locker in the crew quarters.

The steel plant and machinery plant could now roll out cabinets of the same specifications. There were plenty in Zhong Lishi's office and warehouse. But for some reason, compared to what had been brought from the original timeline—even compared to junk like this—the products of this timeline always looked rough, yet one couldn't pinpoint exactly what was wrong. Zhong Lishi was reminded of the feeling he'd had comparing American goods with domestic products when he first went to study in the US in the 1990s. For his own clock and battery products, the situation was even more severe. Maybe it will be better in a few years, he thought to himself. In the old timeline, by the year 2000, "Made in China" had swept the world.

Feng Nuo took out a key and opened the cabinet door. There wasn't much inside: a stack of untidy printed materials mixed with quite a few handwritten and hand-drawn blueprints, several light bulbs, a roll of solder, a few self-sealing plastic bags, and a few iron boxes. Feng Nuo extracted a battered Xinghualou mooncake tin, opened the lid, and took out a paper packet. The packet was stamped with a blurred black marking: Do Not Eat—obviously desiccant manufactured by the chemical plant in this timeline.

Feng Nuo closed the cabinet door, walked back to the desk, set the tin on the workbench, and shook it under the desk lamp. The few components inside rattled. He picked one up, looked at it for a moment, shook his head, and tossed it back. "Doesn't seem quite right. Better not just swap it in for you." He paused to think, saw Zhong Lishi's dejected expression, and quickly added, "Last month Lin Shenhe's computer broke. It was also a Sony—seemed to be a similar model, maybe an older one. His problem was pretty serious. Screen artifacts caused by loose soldering on the screen cable. Couldn't fix it with a soldering iron. We don't have specialized equipment or materials now, nor a clean room, so it's definitely a write-off."

Zhong Lishi understood. Feng Nuo was being long-winded, laying so much groundwork just to tell him to check Lin Shenhe's scrapped motherboard for a similar component. He grew anxious, worried that Lin Shenhe's broken computer was no longer in his possession. Just as he was about to speak, Feng Nuo continued, "Shenhe went to Gaoshanling to scrap the computer and happened to run into Feng Zongze going to store his. He's rarely in Lingao all year round—wouldn't have come back if not for this plenary session. The computer he brought hadn't been used much, so he planned to store it at Gaoshanling..." Seeing him drag Feng Zongze into it, Zhong Lishi hurriedly interrupted, "Then I'll go ask Shenhe. I might need your help to take a look in a few days. Thanks in advance." With that, he slipped out of the room.

Feng Nuo was left momentarily stunned, having to swallow back the gossip about Shenhe borrowing Feng Zongze's computer. He suspected it would be difficult for Dr. Zhong to get parts from Lin Shenhe's old machine. Since that gentleman's computer couldn't be repaired, it was already scrapped. Technically, ownership had reverted to the Planning Commission and the Senate.

Since the crossing, as time passed, more and more personal items from the old timeline belonging to Elders were being scrapped. Elders generally had deep sentimental attachments to these items—especially "alien-tech" products like computers that were unlikely to be revived in their lifetimes. Most hoped to preserve them in a more professional environment like the Planning Commission's controlled goods warehouse. The hot and humid environment of Elder apartments or offices would only accelerate deterioration.

Out of consideration for preserving old timeline technology, the Planning Commission offered a paid service to recover obsolete items from Elders.

Though the recovery conditions offered by the Planning Commission were very attractive—often new timeline high-grade special supplies, plus some old timeline office supplies, expired or nearly expired food and luxury goods—many Elders still hoped to rent a sealed storage box in the Planning Commission warehouse to preserve these old items, waiting for the slim chance they might see the light of day again.

However, electronic and electrical items like computers were not within the scope of the storage service. Once maintenance personnel confirmed an item as unrepairable, it would be forced into the scrapping procedure so the Planning Commission could dismantle the device to obtain spare parts. Though modern electronic equipment mostly used large-scale integrated circuits and there weren't many components that could be desoldered, every additional spare part meant one more possibility of repairing other equipment. This was crucial for the Planning Commission, whose stock of electronic and electrical equipment was constantly dwindling due to attrition.

(End of Chapter)