For users at the time, the Yu Xing PC VCD was the first player to combine the basic functions of a VCD player and a computer, and the high-end model even came with a floppy drive that supported reading and writing data. But like learning machines, for most kids, the main role of the Yuxing VCD was still to play games.
And in the business world at the time, Yuxing was the first mainland private company to land on Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market, valued at more than a billion dollars before it went public. Although its name has long been forgotten by players, Yuxing is actually still a major exporter in the domestic set-top box category. According to public information, Yuxing in 2016 was already a large enterprise with a market capitalization of $4 billion.
Computer VCDs that not many people use to surf the Internet
Yuxing's first computer VCD was launched in October 1998.
In the mid-to-late 1990s, VCRs, with their high cost of consumables, were gradually phased out, and DVD players stood out. In order to cope with the special market environment in China where pirated CD-ROMs were widespread, "Super Error Correction" was generally the most important selling point of VCDs.
At the time, the most popular alternative to computers was the card-carrying learning machine, a combination of FC keyboard and FC body. Because of the guise of "learning", it was a very popular market in China. Although Yuxing also has a learning machine product, and made earlier than the small bully, but because of poor marketing, completely unable to compete with them.
So Yuxing broke the mold and prepared to apply its own learning machine technology to VCDs. After several years of research and development, Yu Xing's computerized VCD was launched during the 11th holiday of 1998. Because of its cheap price and rich features, Yuxing VCDs immediately went off the market everywhere, with dealers across the country snatching them up, and others blocking the office door with cash in hand.
There is an unconfirmed rumor that may be a side reaction to the Yu Xing's sales boom: it is said that a northeastern distributor returned to Liaoning with the goods on the way to the robbers, the other side do not want cash, only robbed a box of brand new computer VCD.
The VCD comes with things other than the remote control, there is a keyboard, a mouse, two handles, and a bunch of random CD-ROMs, including WPS97, Chinese BASIC, and a set of computer VCDs. These include WPS97, Chinese BASIC, LOGO Drawing and so on. Some of the higher-end models also come with a floppy drive that can read and write 3.5-inch floppy disks normally for basic access.
Yuxing PC VCD Model 351D
A basic Yuxing PC VCD costs about a thousand dollars. If you need Internet access, you can buy a separate modem, and the whole set will cost you only 1,600 yuan (before Internet fees) - a much cheaper cost for Internet access on a Yuxing VCD than on a computer that cost tens of thousands of dollars in 1998.
In the mall's Yuxing counter, you can also buy Yuxing self-developed VCD software, from the student textbook support software to the window on the world of multimedia interactive platform, a relatively wide range of categories, the price of only 20 to 30 yuan - the same period of the PC's average price of licensed software in the upper and lower 200 yuan.
Because the main architecture and the Nintendo FC are the same as the Learning Machine, Yuxing's functionality is actually very limited. The so-called Internet function was only to browse text pages, not the multimedia websites of today. Even at a time when multimedia content was scarce, this limitation still raised some questions.
At a press conference for Yuxing's VCDs, someone asked, "Why can't I look at pictures when I'm on the Internet on my Yuxing Learning Machine?" A Yuxing official replied wisely:
"Because there are a lot of unhealthy pictures on the Internet, which will have a bad influence on children using the learning machine, so we don't let it look at pictures."
In fact, the idea of Yuxing being able to access the Internet was a luxury for most families at the time, as the country's network infrastructure was very basic in the 1990s, with dial-up requiring a modem and charging by the minute for Internet access. Yuxing's partner was Terra Nova, China's leading Internet access provider (ISP) - the country's first ISP, which educated a generation of Chinese people about the basic concepts of the Internet. But even with such a suitable partner to start with, the minimal amount of supporting hardware and the extremely high cost of Internet access have deterred most would-be surfers.
Using a Yuxing VCD to access Terra Nova
The good news is that not too many people expected to use a Yuxing VCD to access the Internet. Just as the purpose of buying a learning machine was not to learn, the reason many children begged their parents to buy one was not to watch and surf. So in many homes, the first part to break is not the optical head of the VCD drive, but the 1P handle.
Because the YuXing VCD uses a CD-ROM as a carrier, it can carry a much larger data capacity than an FC cassette, and the three CD-ROMs that come with it alone contain nearly five hundred games, and the repetition rate is extremely low, unlike some 999-in-1s that count Contra levels 1~8 as eight games. One of the CD-ROMs also contains a lot of 512k large-capacity "intellectual cards", including many Chinese works of alien technology, with a floppy drive can be realized with the import and export of the archive.
YuXing game disc catalog
YuXing computer VCD, priced at about 1,000 yuan, is affordable enough for users even if they only count the value of the game discs -- after all, around '98, the cheapest pirated yellow card cost 20 yuan, and stuffing it with a few hundred games at once would feel like It's a great way to get rich overnight.
Of course, Yuxing used unlicensed ROMs, but that was the prevailing environment at the time, so Yuxing's approach not only didn't receive any public criticism, but was seen as a lightning rod by gamers. In addition to the included CD-ROMs, high-end models of VCDs with their own floppy drives could be used to copy games at point-of-sale on floppy disks for two dollars each time, far cheaper than buying a box of non-erasable pirated Little Yellow Cards.
But by the early 20th century, manufacturers such as Xintiandi, who came to the forefront later, integrated more advanced 16-bit game consoles such as MD and SFC into VCDs, and Yuxing, which could only be used to play FC, lost its biggest advantage at once, and gradually withdrew from the mainstream market.
Entrepreneur Zhu Weisha and his Yuxing Technology
Yuxing Technology was founded in 1991, headquartered in Beijing, the founder of the Institute of Economics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Zhu Weisha. Zhu Weisha was already 35 years old when he decided to start his own business. He saw a business opportunity in the reform and opening up, quit his job, and with three other partners put together 100,000 yuan, and went into business.
Zhu Weisha
The team's initial office was located in the 35th courtyard of Beijing's Xijiaochang, not far from the Houhai Sea, and the name of the license plate at that time was still "Yuxing Mechatronics Research Institute". A dozen or so employees, most of them commuting on bicycles, cooking over a fire in a kitchen of a few square meters, and working day and night in the compound to program, draw, and write solutions. Now they have long since moved to the Tiancheng Technology Building near Deshengmen, but for the old staff, it is still the dormitory-like courtyard that they are most attached to.
No. 35 Xijiaochang courtyard, taken in 1993. The motorcycle in the picture was Zhu Weisha's "ride" for deliveries
Before entering the field of "popular computers," Zhu and his partners made their first buckets of money with the maintenance of medical computer equipment.
Before Ze was a big hit, Yuxing was already involved in the development of learning machines. At that time, the domestic research and development of learning machine to the north and south division, the south is Shenzhen as the center of the pyramid and Kotter, the north is the technology leading Yu Xing technology. Compared with other manufacturers, Yuxing further optimized the function of "computer learning", and launched the corresponding auxiliary software, this time in 1993.
One of the biggest differences between the PC Learning Machine and the form that gamers know today is that the cassette and the PC Learning Machine itself were one and the same, and in late '93, a technician from Apollo Electronics cracked the pyramid and managed to separate the contents of the cassette, which on one hand signaled the birth of a new form of PC Learning Machine, and on the other hand announced the death sentence for the all-in-one PC Learning Machine.
Yuxing's early one-piece learning machines
The Ze Wang learning machine, which became a big hit, was launched in 1994 after the V3.0 model. This rising star in the Jackie Chan TV commercials and Donald Duck voice Li Yang's voice-over, led by the opening voice, all the way up, and once became synonymous with "learning machine", so that Yuxing, Pyramid, on the contrary, has become a non-mainstream brand.
Towards the end of 1996, VCDs began to be popularized in Chinese households. Zhu Weisha immediately saw the business opportunities, and planned to combine the disk drive and learning machine, so that the VCD in reading the disk, but also has the Internet and multimedia interactive functions.
Two years later, in early 1998, their attempts made initial progress: the first learning machine with a modem that could access the Internet (what Yuxing called a "universal computer") came to market, and it could be dialed up and accessed through a phone line, just like a real computer. Many years later, someone took apart a childhood Yushin Learning Machine and found that the CPU inside was exactly the same as the 8-bit CPU in the Apple I and Apple II, and the Nintendo FC as well. Although the learning machine and the Apple II is not the same era of products, but it is true that there is no problem to call it a "popular computer".
What really brought Yuxing to glory was the Yuxing computer VCD mentioned at the beginning.
After the success of the Internet Learning Machine experiment, it wasn't long before a VCD with Internet access was made. And Zhu Weisha predicted the same, the new product on the market, immediately gained a good market response - a Yu Xing VCD can simultaneously meet the watching video, Internet, learning computer, playing games. And the mainstream VCD price is about a thousand dollars, Yuxing computer VCD is the same price, the advantage is obvious.
While the final sales volume of Yuxing's VCDs was never officially announced, it did make Yuxing a success: in January 2000, Yuxing was listed on Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM), making it the first mainland private company to be listed on Hong Kong's stock market.
On Jan. 31, 2000, Yu Hing was listed on the Growth Enterprise Market of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange
Yu Hing was somehow lucky to be listed in Hong Kong. A big part of the reason for this came from a group photo published in the Hong Kong media of the Venus Project launch, showing Zhu Weisha shaking hands with the world's richest man, Bill Gates. The photo was widely reprinted in the Hong Kong media, laying the groundwork for Yuxing's IPO.
In 1999, Bill Gates came to Shenzhen, China, to study and promote the "Venus Project", which aims to promote and popularize the Internet by putting Windows CE into set-top boxes and VCDs, thus reducing the cost of Internet access. The purpose is to promote and popularize the Internet. In addition to Lenovo and other computer manufacturers, Zhu Weisha also brought their computer VCDs to the event and was photographed.
Unfortunately, because China's Internet infrastructure was so poorly built at the end of the 20th century, it was a problem to cope with existing Internet users, much less to take care of new ones. At the beginning of the new century, Microsoft's grandiose plans did not work, and Yuxing was unable to reverse the gradual replacement of computerized VCD devices with real computers, even after embracing Microsoft's legacy.
To May 2001, Zhu Weisha hope to make a breakthrough in the new field, so the group of several enterprises **** with a shareholding in Founder Technology, with the intention of becoming the main controlling party of the Founder. But this move ended in failure, before and after *** loss of tens of millions of dollars.
During this time, Zhu Weisha recognized "China's youngest chairman of the listed company" Zhang Hai, and funding to support Zhang Hai's acquisition of Jianlibao. The next thing may be a lot of friends have heard of: in 2005, keen to bet on the chairman of the Jianlibao Zhang Hai, suspected of job misappropriation and misappropriation of funds, was sentenced to 10 years in prison. There is a long story behind this acquisition, and interested readers can search for "Jianlibao", "Li Jingwei" and "Zhang Hai" to learn more about it, so I won't repeat it here.
In 2005, Zhang Hai, the former chairman of the board of directors of Jianlibao, was sentenced to imprisonment for embezzlement and misappropriation of funds
On the other hand, a number of manufacturers such as Ke Wang, Xin Tianli and Dr. Long suddenly launched a rounds of attacks on Yuxing -- learning machine has a small Dawang, repeater has a step-by-step, the electronic dictionary is the wenquxing, but computer VCDs are no longer the only one.
These manufacturers are no longer the only ones in the market.
These events, so that the once-lucrative Yuxing gradually from the front stage to the backstage, as the corporate image of the spokesman Zhu Weisha also do not often appear, basically faded out of the public's field of vision.
Yuxing, which exited the DVD player market, put its next major target on set-top boxes -- the so-called "set-top boxes" are not the familiar household TV boxes from Xiaomi and LeEco, but rather customized products for businesses, hotels, automobiles, and other commercial areas, with a large portion of them made specifically for the overseas market. Yuxing is just a manufacturer of these set-top boxes, and does not license them, so we rarely see the familiar Sonic logo on them.
Yuxing's official website
In an interview with Investment Express, Zhu Weisha explained the change by saying that companies should appear as businesses, not as individuals, and that they should consciously put themselves under the company when a business owner overrides the company, something is wrong with the company.
But for those of us who bought Yu Xing only to play games, that brought countless hours of joy to the Yu Xing computer VCDs and those few how to play not tired of the game disk, but always stayed in the memory of 20 years ago.