9
Wild Projects
During those four years at HP, from the time I was twenty- two to twenty-six, I constantly built my own electronics projects on the side. And that's not even including Dial-a-Joke. Some of these were really amazing.
在惠普的4年里，即从22岁到26岁，我总在业余时制作自己的电子工程，其中不乏佳作，但并不包括“拨号听笑话”。
When 1 look back, I see that all these projects, plus the science projects I did as a kid and all the stuff my dad taught me, were actually threads of knowledge that converged in my design of the first and second Apple computers.
回头望去，从我儿时的科学工程到父亲所教的知识，再到之后的那些工程，我发现所有知识都在第一、二代苹果电脑设计中得以体现。
After Dial-a-Joke, I was still dating Alice, still living in my first apartment in Cupertino, still coming home every night to watch Star Trek on TV and work on my projects. And there was almost always some kind of a project to work on, because after a while, people at HP started talking about my design skills to their friends, and I started to get calls from them. Like, could I go down to some guy's house and design something electronic for him Gadgets, stuff like that. I would always do it for no money - I'd say, Just fly me down to Los Angeles and I'll bring the design down and I'll get it working. I never charged any money for it because this was my thing in life -designing stuff - this is what I loved to do. As I said before, it was my passion.
“拨号听笑话”之后，我仍然与爱丽丝约会，仍然住在我在库比提诺的第一幢公寓，仍然在回家后收看《星际旅行》（Star Trek），并进行我的工程制作。我总有各种工程项目来完成。因为不久，惠普的同事向他们的朋友谈及我的设计天赋，于是总有这样的电话找我。比如，我是否可以去谁家帮助设计一个电子设备？一些类似小器具的东西。我得说，我从没有为此收费。他们只需送我到洛杉矾，我就能进行设计并让其工作。我从不收费，因为这是我今生的爱好——设计——我喜欢做的事情。就像我所说，这是我的热情所在。
My boss, Stan Mintz, once came to me with a project to do a home pinball game. These Mends of his wanted to build a little pin- ball game with rockers and buttons and flippers, just like the ones you use in arcades. So I basically designed something digital that could watch the system, track signals, display the score, sound buzzers and all that. But there was one very tricky circuit that confused Stan, and I remember him telling me, "No, that's wrong. It won't work." But I showed him why it would work. And it did.
有一次，我的老板斯坦·明斯让我帮忙做一个家用的弹球游戏机。他的朋友想要用弧型杆、按键和遥控器做一个弹球游戏机，就像你们所玩的街机。我将这一装置设计成数字型，具有观察系统、跟踪信号、展示分数以及发出蜂鸣音等功能。但是，斯坦被其中有一个巧妙的电路迷惑了，我还记得他说：“不，错了吧，这不能运转。”而我告诉了他可以运转的道理。
I just loved it whenever other engineers, especially my boss, would be surprised by my designs. That always made me happy
当其他工程师，尤其是老板惊叹于我的设计时，我都怡然自得，并因此而快乐。
- o -
And soon I was getting involved in one of the most amazing projects. Someone asked me to help design the digital part of the first hotel movie system, which was based on the very earliest VCRs. No one had VCRs then, of course. I was thinking, Oh my god! This is going to be incredible -designing movies for hotels! I couldn't get over it.
很快我又加入一项让人叹为观止的工程中。有人让我帮助设计第一代酒店电影系统的数字部分，且以早期的录像机设备为基础。那时没有人拥有录像机。噢，上帝！这真是难以置信，竟让我设计酒店电影系统。我无法拒绝。
Their formula was this. They'd line up about six VCRs. Then they had a method of sending special TV channels to everybody's room. They could play the movies on those channels. There was a filter in each room to block those channels. But the hotel clerk in the lobby could send a signal to unlock the filter in a particular room. Then the guest could watch the movie they ordered on their TV. Someone in the VCR room had to literally start the movie, but this was still a really cool system.
他们的方案如下：用6台录像机，让每个房间都有特定的电视频道，然后在频道里播放电影。每间房都有种装置能锁住这些频道，但位于大厅的店员可以输入信号将其打开，这样客人就可以欣赏自己点播的电影，录像机房的人会依照指令播放。这在当时可是很先进的系统。
Another project I did was for a company that came out with the first consumer VCRs, and yes, it was before the Betamax. It was called Cartrivision, and the VCR had this amazing motor in it with its own circuit board that spun as it ran the motor. In other words, the spinning circuit board was actually the electronics that ran the motor! It was very strange.
我还为一家公司做过一项工程，那家公司曾经生产了第一代大众录像机，先于Beta制录像系统，叫做Cartrivision系统，它的内部有一个神奇的驱动器，由其密集的电路板发动。换而言之，实际是电路板在保持驱动器的运转，真是奇特！
Well, at HP I heard a rumor that this little company had gone bankrupt and they had about eight thousand color VCRs for sale, cheap. I mean, at the time a black-and-white VCR for a school cost almost $1,000. But Cartrivision was selling them at this super-low surplus price. So my friends and I would drive down to their San Jose tape duplication facility. And we'd walk through the building, just amazed at these hundreds of color VCRs in boxes. They weren't really cabinet VCRs like you've seen, but kind of open, where you could see all the circuitry. Anyway, we'd take a bunch of engineers down there and buy them for, like, $60.
在惠普时我就听到传言，这家小公司因为破产要处理掉近8000台彩色录像机。那时学校购买黑白录像机都要花费1000美元，Cartrivision却以极低的价钱卖出如此多的彩色录像机。我和朋友们开车到他们的圣·荷塞录音器材店，进入大楼，就惊叹眼前的数百台彩色录像机，那不是你们见到的盒式录像机，而是开放式的，所有电路一览无遗。不管怎样，我们带了一大帮工程师去，最后以60美元一台成交。
This became a huge part of my life almost right away. 1 studied the kinds of circuits the VCR used, how it worked, went through all the manuals. I tried to figure out how they processed color, how color got recorded onto tape, how the power supply worked. This was all information that came in really handy when we did the color Apple computers. And then I would buy wooden boxes to put these naked color VCRs into. Listen, I had a working color VCR in my apartment in Cupertino when nobody, but nobody, in the world had a VCR at home.
此后，研究这个就几乎成为我生活的全部。我研究录像机使用的电路，它们如何工作，并查阅所有相关手册。我还尽力学习它们如何加工为彩色并记录进盒带，以及能源如何得以供应。正因为这段学习经历，我在开发彩色苹果电脑时才得以对这类知识信手拈来。然后我买下木盒子把这些裸露的彩色录像机装了进去。当时，我在库比提诺的公寓里就有这么一台，而那时世界上还没什么家庭拥有录像机。
There were only a few movies available at the time. The first one I watched at home was The Producers. I saw it right there on my Cartrivision. I opened up my TV, looked at the schematic to figure out where the video signal was, and figured out how to match it to the Cartrivision. That way, I could record shows, too. One of the things I actually recorded was Nixon's resignation on TV. So I must be one of the only people in the world to have a consumer tape of that, because if you go back to that date in time, 1974, you'll see that there were absolutely no VCRs on the market available to consumers.
那时只有很少的电影可以买到录像带，我在家看的第一部是《制造者》（The Producers），就在我的Cartrivision机上。我打开电视，想找到录像信号从哪里进入，以及如何与Cartrivision系统相配。我也录下了一些电视节目，其中就有尼克松辞职的电视讲话。所以，我应该是世界上唯一拥有这一录像带的人。因为如果你回到1974年那一天，会发现市场上绝对没有录像机销售。
- o -
Now let me tell you about Pong. Remember Pong It was the first successful video game (first in the arcade, later at home), and it came from a company called Atari. I remember I was at the Homestead Lanes bowling alley in Sunnyvale with Alice, who was by now my fiancee. And there it was, Pong. I was just mesmerized.
现在我们再谈谈Pong。记得吗？这是第一个成功的电子游戏，由一家叫雅达利的公司开发。当时我与未婚妻爱丽丝一起漫步于家园街的保龄球场，当我发现了那台Pong的时候，立即就被迷住了。
Pong really stood out for me because it was a full-size arcade game right there in a bowling alley. Back then, bowling alleys had a bunch of pinball machines everywhere, but never, ever anything electronic. And Pong was so different from those. It had this little black-and-white TV screen with digital sounds coming out of it -pong, pong, pong. You used the dials to move a paddle up and down to hit a little white ball and bat it to the other player's paddle. It was so simple, but so fun.
Pong游戏如此吸引我，因为在保龄球场里只有它是成熟的街机游戏。那时保龄球场到处都是弹球游戏机，从来没有一台真正的电子游戏机。而Pong是如此与众不同，黑白显示屏和传出的数字声音——砰、砰、砰。你用摇控盘来移动球板，击打弹跳的白球，并将其打给另一玩家。这个游戏简单而有趣。
All I could do was stare at it in amazement. And I noticed that while pinball games cost a dime to play and required only one person to play, this game cost a quarter and needed two people.
我只是目瞪口呆地看着它。同时我还发现弹球游戏需要1角硬币，只能一个人玩，而这个游戏只需25美分就可供两人娱乐。
The thing I thought was so incredible wasn't so much the game concept - I mean, it was very much like Ping-Pong or tennis or something like that - as the fact that somebody had come up with the idea that by controlling the white and black dots (pixels) on a TV screen, you could actually build a game. Wow!
我认为这一游戏理念真是太棒了，它就像是乒乓、网球这类运动。事实上，也有人提出过这样的想法，只需控制电视屏幕上的黑白点，你就可以开发一种游戏。哇！
And it was a game so different from pinball, but still very attractive. In fact, I found it even more attractive, because of its newness, than all those flashy pinball machines. I got some quarters and played a few games with Alice, and then I sort of stood there awhile and stared at it. Alice said, "What What are you thinking"
它与弹球游戏完全不同，却也具有极大的吸引力。实际上，我发现它甚至比昙花一现的弹球游戏更吸引人，因为它是一种全新的游戏。我换了些零钱，与爱丽丝玩了一会儿，然后我站在那里稍停片刻。爱丽丝问：“怎么了？你在想什么？”
What Here's what, I said. "I could design one of these."
“什么？这就是什么。”我说，“我也能设计一个。”
I knew the minute I started thinking about it that I could design it because I knew how digital logic could create signals at the right times. And I knew how television worked on this principle. I knew all this from high school working at Sylvania, from the hotel movie system, from Cartrivision, from all kinds of experience I'd already had.
我站住沉思时所想的就是我也能设计出这样的游戏，因为我懂得数字逻辑怎样正确发送信号，也懂得这一原理如何运用于电视。所有这些知识，都来自于我的经历，阳光谷高中时所做的工程、酒店电影系统的设计，以及对Cartrivision录像机的研究等等。
So right there in that bowling alley I suddenly had this cool new goal. I was going to go back and start thinking about my first design that was actually going to put characters on a TV set. I remember how, way back in high school, I wondered how, if I ever did a computer, I would ever be able to afford one that could display characters on a screen. That was unfathomable back then. But now, I knew, something was different.
因此，就在保龄球场里，我突然冒出一个新目标。回去后，我就开始设计，能用电视表现图像。如果是在高中，我若是拥有电脑，也能让其屏幕播放图像，但在那时这不可企及。然而，我知道现在和以前有所不同。
Everything had changed.
一切都改变了。
- o -
I right away decided I was going to build my own Pong game, for my own use at home, and that meant I had to design it from scratch.
我立即决定从草图设计开始，制造自己的Pong游戏机。
To understand how I did this, you have to know a little bit about how a TV set works. It draws a regular pattern, in little dots, in lines across the screen. Left to right for the top line, left to right for the next one, left to right for the next one down, and so on. When it gets done with all 575 lines, it starts again. There's a precise interval, too, between the drawing of each line. All of this is part of what's known as the National Television Systems Committee (NTSC) standard, which is the standard all TVs in the United States follow.
要想明白我如何制造游戏机，你就必须了解电视工作的原理。电视具有一些常规的模式，一些小点构成屏幕上的一条条线。最高的一条线由从左到右的小点组成，下一条同样如此，再下一条仍然相同。当一共组成575条线时，又重新开始。每两条线间也有一个精确的间距。这些都得符合国家电视系统委员会（NTSC）的标准，全美的电视产品无一例外。
So I understood exactly what the right timings were. I figured out exactly how I could use chips to delay the amount of time the lines scanned on the TV and generated a dot on the screen at the right moment. I also kept track of where it was drawing dots at any point in time.
所以我明白关键所在。我发现了怎么才能延长光线掠过屏幕以及产生圆点的时间。我还记录下及时的圆点位置。
So if you look at an NTSC television set, there might be 300,000 total possible dot positions, each corresponding to where the line is at any point in time. And remember, each one of these dot positions is getting hit as the TV draws the picture line by line, left to right, from top to bottom, really fast. It happens about 60 times a second. I figured out that I should be able to design a circuit that could keep up with the timing and generate TV signals to draw dots in other places on the screen.
如果你能观察到NTSC电视，就会发现大约共有30万个圆点的位置，每一个都取决剧烈的光束及时地落在哪一点上。请记住，当电视显示图像时，这些点的位置由光线一排排掠过，从左到右，从上到下，很是迅速，大约每秒60次。我明白，应该可以设计出一种电路，它能及时发出信号，而在位于其他地方的屏幕打点。
One of my skills was that I was really good at designing things with the absolute minimum amount of chips. That goes back to the Cream Soda Computer. So I figured out how to put just a few chips together and use a crystal clock chip (like the one in my Blue Box or the one that keeps time in your watch) to control the timing and keep count of what is happening.
我善于用最少的零件完成设计，这是我的长项之一。就如制造“奶油苏打电脑”时一样，所以我计划好如何用少量零件和一块石英钟零件来控制时间，并记录发生的次数。
TVs at that time didn't have any video input connections. There was no video-in like there is now. And I needed a video-in connection if I was going to design a game that would let you display the game on-screen. But how could I figure out where on the TV the video came in from the antennas
不同于现在，那时的电视还没有图像输入连接。如果我要设计出能在屏幕播放的游戏，则需要图像连接。而图像经天线后进入电视哪里了呢，我要怎样才能找到呢？
Well, all TVs came with schematics back then. And if you read the schematics and you knew electronics, you could study the transistors and the filters and the coils and the voltages. You could trace your way through the circuit and find out where the video signal really exists in the TV.
那时的电视都附带有图。再加上对电子学的一些了解，就能了解晶体、滤器、线圈和电压，并随着电路找到图像信号真正储存的部位。
So that's where the signal goes into the display circuits of the television set, the signal that carries the television picture according to NTSC standards. I tapped around with an oscilloscope, and with a few resistors and test points I was able to find the exact point of the video signal inside the TV. So I just applied my own video signal to that point, and from then on I could generate everything on the screen.
而信号进入电视播放电路的具体位置以及电视的图像信号都得符合NTSC标准。我用示波器、一些晶体管进行逐一测试，就能找到电视内部图像信号的确切部位。然后我将自己的图像信号连于那一部位，就能在屏幕上播放出一切想要的图像了。
I also could've put my own TV signal on a TV channel through what is called a modulator. It's the same way a VCR, for instance, puts a TV picture on Channel 3. But my other method was more efficient - better and easier -for me at the time.
我也能用调幅器把自己的信号输入电视频道，原理和VCR差不多。例如，把电视图像于3频道播放。但是，对于那时的我而言，另一方法更为有效而简单。
So this Pong game I did, it wasn't commercial, of course. I did it all on my own, at home. It had nothing to do with Atari, but I did do it at least a year before Atari came up with a home Pong game that worked with your TV.
当然，我所做的Pong游戏也具有商业价值。这一切都由我在自己家中独自完成，与雅达利公司毫不相关。而且，我的家用Pong游戏机先于雅达利公司至少1年。
All in all, I ended up with twenty-eight chips for the Pong design. This was amazing, back in the days before microprocessors. Every bit of the game had to be implemented in wires and small gates -in hardware, in other words. There was no game program - that is, a game in software form that someone could load. It was all hardwired.
总而言之，我最终以28个零件完成了Pong的设计，那时还没有微处理器，这可相当惊人。每一段游戏都以线路和逻辑门为基础——换而言之就是硬件。没有游戏程序——并非人们可下载到的软件游戏。它完全以硬件构成。
Well, I wanted to make mine even more special, so in addition to showing the score on-screen, I programmed these little chips (called PROMs, for programmable read-only memory) to spell out four-letter words every time you missed the ball. You know. Like HECK or DARN. Not exactly those words, but this is a family book. Anyway, I could easily turn the four-letter-word feature on or off with a switch.
为突出风格，更显特别，我在屏幕上加上了分数显示，并用小零件——“可编程序的只读存诸器”编出程序，每次没击中球就会出现4个字母的单词，比如“真见鬼”（HECK）和“该死的”（DARN）。另外，只需一个按键我就能控制这些词是否被显示。
Once, while visiting Steve Jobs, who was working at Atari, I showed it to a bunch of engineers there and they loved it. Soon after, I showed it to A1 Alcorn, who was one of the top guys (next to founder Nolan Bushnell) at Atari, and he was really impressed! They thought it was funny, with the dirty words and all.
有一次去探望在雅达利工作的斯蒂夫·乔布斯，我给那里的一些工程师展示这台游戏机，他们都爱不释手。很快，这家公司的高层人物艾尔·奥尔康（Al Alcorn，其地位仅次于创始人诺兰·布什内尔（Nolan Bushnell））了也在此欣赏了我的杰作，而且印象深刻。所有人都认为我的游戏机趣味横生。
They offered me a job right then and there, but I said, No way. I explained to them that I could never leave Hewlett-Packard. It wasn't possible. My plan, I told them, was to work at HP for life. It was the best company for an engineer like me.
他们当场就邀请我去工作，但我却婉言拒绝。我表明自己永不会离开惠普公司，绝不。我还告诉他们，我决定一生为惠普贡献，那里才最适合我这样的工程师。
- o -
A few months later - and of course I was still at Hewlett- Packard - I got a call from my friend Steve Jobs. He was getting excited about some interesting work he was doing at Atari. Atari was getting all kinds of attention by then for having started the video game revolution with games like Pong. Its chief at the time, Bushnell, well, he was just larger than life. Steve said it was a blast to work for him.
不久后，我当然仍在惠普，斯蒂夫·乔布斯打电话给我，很兴奋地谈论起他在雅达利公司的某项有趣的工作。雅达利公司那时正开始全神贯注地对Pong这样的游戏进行一场电子游戏的革命，为首的布什内尔是位杰出非凡的人物。斯蒂夫说，为他工作让人心花怒放。
So anyway, Steve had this job at Atari. After the people designed the games at Atari's Grass Valley design facility, they'd send them down to Steve in Los Gatos. And he would look at those games and try to give them, you know, some final tweaks. Whatever could make them just a little bit better, he would do. Or he might find bugs.
因此，斯蒂夫在雅达利做以下工作。当工程师们在草谷设计室完成游戏机设计后，他们会将其送到加州洛思佳的斯蒂夫那里。然后由他研究游戏并尽力提供建议，也就是“最后的挣扎”。任何能让其更加完善的机会，他都不会放弃，有时他也可能因此而抓狂。
Steve called me at work one day saying that Nolan wanted to do another Pong-like game. Nolan wanted me to do it because he knew how good I was at doing designs with the fewest possible chips. Nolan had been complaining that the Atari games were going higher and higher in chip count, approaching two hundred chips for a single game. He wanted them to be simpler. And he'd seen how good I was at that.
一天，斯蒂夫告诉我诺兰想完成另一种类似Pong的游戏机并希望我参与其中，因为他知道我善于使用最少的零件来完成设计。同时，他也抱怨雅达利游戏机的零件总是不断增长，一台甚至需要200个零件，而他则希望更加简单，也很清楚我对此的能力。
Steve said Nolan wanted a one-player version of Pong, but with bricks that would bounce the ball back to the paddle. You gotta get in here, he said. "They're right. You'd be perfect for it."
斯蒂夫说诺兰想要Pong的单人版本。“你必需加入。”他说，“他们是对的，你是完成这一项目的最佳人选。”
I was immediately excited because I could see that if one player could play it, instead of it needing two players, it could be a much more fun game. Because when the ball breaks enough bricks -do you remember this game -it can then get behind the bricks and start bouncing them from behind, which bounces even more bricks out. So it's a little more complicated, and you don't need someone else to play.
我立即兴奋起来，如果一个人就可以玩游戏，而不是非要两个人，那会有趣得多。因为当球打退足够的砖后，就能将砖块抛向后边，然后开始从后面击打，甚至打退更多。这样，游戏比以前的版本更为复杂，也就需要两人对打。
So, not even thinking about it, I said, "Sure."
于是，我想都没想就满口答应了：“当然可以。”
And then Steve says, "Well, there's a caveat. It has to be done in four days." Wow! Back then there wasn't a game you could do in four days. Plus, a game was all hardware. It was hardware where every single wire mattered and every single connection had to determine when signals would be on the screen. And then, I mean, there were the thousands of little connections between chips, and they all mattered, and I realized that this timetable was ridiculous. A game like that should take engineers working on a normal schedule a few months to complete.
然后斯蒂夫却告诉我，“好吧，但有期限要求，必须在4天内完成。”哇！那时，在4天内完成一个游戏的设计是根本不可能的事情。况且，全是由硬件构造，也就是说，屏幕上的所有信号都取决于每一条线路的连接。要知道，零件间有数以千计的线路连接，每个都至关重要。我感觉这一期限荒谬得离谱。这样的游戏本应让工程师以几个月的正常进度来完成。
I realized I could probably do this in a shorter time than anyone else, but I still thought it was an insane goal to do a hardware game in four days.
我认为自己可能是唯一能在这么短的时间内完成任务的人，但仍是觉得在4天内做好一台硬件游戏机是一个疯狂的计划。
But I was up for the challenge.
没错！我还是直面挑战。
- o -
So I designed this game Breakout.
就这样，我设计了这一游戏——《突破重围》（Breakout）。
I began by actually drawing the schematics so a TV would display light on the screen - line by line. I didn't sleep for four days and nights during this project. During the day, I drew the design on paper, drawing it out clearly enough so that a technician could take the design and wire chips together. At night Steve would wire the chips together, using a technique called wire-wrapping. Wire-wrapping is a way of connecting chips with wires that does not require soldering. I prefer soldering, myself, because it's always cleaner, smaller, and tighter. But wire-wrapping is how most technicians do it. Don't ask me why.
我首先画出草图，让电视屏幕能播放——一排接一排显示出光。这4天里我日以继夜地工作，不曾睡觉。白天，我画好草图，让其清晰明了，以便技师能根据设计连接零件。晚上，斯蒂夫会用绕线机把电线接上零件。绕线机用于连接电线和零件，无需焊接。我自己更喜欢焊接，因为更利落、连接点更小也更紧，然而技师们更喜欢绕线机，别问我为什么。
With wire-wrapping, you hear a zipping sound of a little electronic motor, the sound of it wrapping a wire around a small metal pole. In about a second the wire-wrap gun wraps the wire about ten times around the metal pole. Then zip onto another one. Zip onto another one. Over and over. It actually gets kind of messy, with wires dangling everywhere between the metal poles. But like I said, that's how things are done - a lot of engineers still do it that way. I can't understand why, but they do.
当绕线机在金属孔接电线时，它的发动机会发出一些尖啸声。大约1秒内它就接线数十次，然后再连接另一条，此后一条接一条。实际上弄得一团糟，金属孔间到处都是电线。但是，如我所言，许多工程师仍是使用这一机器，我不明所以，但他们就是如此。
Well, then Steve would breadboard it - that means putting all the components, wires, chips, and everything, onto a prototype board - and do the wire-wrapping.
然后，斯蒂夫做一个模拟板——也就是把所有零件、电线等等放于一块标准板上，再进行连接。
It's funny how when you're up so late at night for so long your mind can get into these creative places, the kind of creative places that come to you when you're halfway between asleep and awake.
有意思的是，这么长时间的熬夜之后，我却总能精神抖擞，要进入半梦半醒的状态时，总会突然兴奋起来。
For instance, I remember Steve one night saying something about how Atari was planning on using a microprocessor in a game someday soon.
例如，我还记得，斯蒂夫有晚就告诉我雅达利公司很快就有计划将微处理器运用于游戏。
Whoa. I didn't know exactly what a microprocessor was, but I knew enough to know that what we were talking about is a whole little computer inside. And I thought, Wow, a little computer could be inside a game, which either meant that the computer would actually make all the decisions in the game or the game could be a program that used the microprocessor to make it powerful. I imagined what it might look like someday when microproces sors could control games. My brain just took a leap there. There were so many ways it could go.
我那时甚至还不知道微处理器的确切意思，但清楚我们谈论的是其内部将有一台小电脑。哇，一台小电脑将在一台游戏机内，也就意味着电脑实际将主宰游戏，而游戏就成了通过电脑运行的程序。我幻想着当某天微处理器控制游戏，又将是怎样。我的思想跃了一大步，觉得什么都有可能发生。
Then there was another night when some guys were overlaying colored cellophane over the TV screen to make our game look like it had colors in it. As things went from left to right, the colors would sort of shift. And I thought, Oh my gosh, color in computer games would be so neat, that would be just unbelievable!
还有一天晚上，一些朋友们在玻璃纸上涂上颜色，放在屏幕上，我们的游戏仿佛着色一般。当图像从左向右移时，色彩也仿佛在移动。当时感觉很棒，彩色电子游戏是如此美妙，真是难以相信。
I used to sit on a bench with Steve on the left-hand side of me breadboarding. And I'd be thinking about how I sort of knew what the waves for color would look like in an oscilloscope. I could imagine it. For instance, one nice pure wave is called a "phase shift." So the way color TV is designed is it has this one particular wave of a certain frequency, a certain number of times per second, which is roughly 3.7593-something cycles per second. Perfect.
我通常坐在长椅上，而斯蒂夫就在我的左手边制作模拟板。我思考着自己似乎了解示波器上彩色波是怎样的，可以想像。例如，一个完整的波叫做一个“移相”。所以，彩色电视的原理就是具有一定频率的特殊波，即使1秒内有一定次数，大概是每秒3.7593个循环。
According to the theory of phase delay, on an American TV set that particular signal will show up as a color. And there are complicated mathematics and circuits that can introduce the right phase delay to get the color you want. (Also, the signal itself that comes to a TV set can be higher or lower voltage. Higher voltage means lighter -more toward white -while lower voltage is darker -more toward black.)
根据相位延迟理论，在美国电视上，特殊信号能以颜色显示出来。正确引入相位延迟，得到所想要的颜色，需要复杂的数学运算和电路图。（另外，信号也可在高或低的电压中输入电视。高电压时更亮，即更白，而低电压时则更暗，即更黑。）
But somehow this idea popped into my head that if you took a digital chip - a chip that works with Is and Os, not waves - and you spun this chip around with four little bits, you end up with four Os. And four Os would look just like black on a TV. And what if you put four Is in Then you'd get white. Now, say, you put 1, 0, 1, 0, and the rotation was fast enough, it's going to average out gray. So if you could keep spinning this register at the exact right rate, it would come out as the United States color TV frequency, showing up as color on most TV sets. You could even put it through a small filter and round it off the way real color TV set waves work. The concept I came up with is that if I kept shifting this register around, it just might come out in purple, or red if it was shifted slightly the other way.
所以，一个想法在我脑中萌生。如果用一种数字零件，即以1或0工作，而不以波的形式，就可用4字节来运作这一零件，也可叫做1、0、1、0，（变换高低电压）。若是最后为4个0，即电视变黑，如果是4个1，则会变白。如果是1、0、1、0，就会成为灰色。因此，如果在此范围内正确调节，就可得到美国电视机频段的颜色，和大多电视机相差无几。接着我就想到，如果我不断变化，超过这一范围，以其他方法移动，就可能出现紫色或是红色。
How amazing that one little digital chip doing nothing but Is and Os could do what color TVs could with waves! It would be so much simpler and more precise.
1和0的数字零件可对电视产生的影响将是多么令人惊奇啊，既简单又精确。
That was amazing because back then, color TVs operated with circuits a lot more complicated than any computer was back then. And the funny thing is, that very idea came to me in the middle of the night at that lab at Atari. I did no testing on it, but I filed it away in my memory, and eventually that was exactly how things like color monitors ended up on personal computers everywhere. Because of my wild idea that night.
之所以惊奇，是因为那时，电视所使用的零件比电脑更多、更复杂。有趣的是，这一想法是在半夜产生于雅达利公司的实验室里。我并没尝试去做，但牢记在心。而最终，像彩色监控器这样的东西已广泛运用于个人电脑。只因我午夜的一个疯狂想法。
- o -
In addition to thinking, while I was waiting for Steve to finish breadboarding I also spent a lot of time playing what I thought was the best game ever: Gran Trak 10. In just those couple of nights, I got so good at it that many years later, when I found one in a pizza parlor, I was able to get the score you needed for a free pizza every time. After I did that twice, the pizza parlor got rid of the machine.
在等待斯蒂夫完成模拟板时，除了思考，大量时间里我都在玩赛车游戏（GranGrak），我所认为的最棒的游戏。就在这几夜里，我已驾轻就熟。以至于多年后，当发现一家比萨店放有一台这样的游戏机时，我每次都能拿到足够高分，免费享用比萨。当然，成功两次后，比萨店就搬走了游戏机。
Maybe you're wondering why I didn't use the extra two hours to sleep instead of playing Gran Trak 10, a racing game I loved. It was because at any moment Steve might call me in and say, "Okay, I've got breadboard. Let's test it." And I had to be there for the testing because I was the one who'd understand the circuit I'd designed.
也许你们会很好奇，为何在那2小时里，我不睡觉，而是选择玩自己喜爱的竞技游戏GranTrak10。因为，斯蒂夫在任何时间都可能叫住我：“好啦，模拟板完成了，我们来测试吧。”然后我就不得不参与测试，因为这些电路由我设计，也只有我能懂。
The bottom line of this story is that I actually did finish this project in four days and nights somehow, and it worked. Steve and I both ended up with mononucleosis. The whole thing used forty-five chips, and Steve paid me half the seven hundred bucks he said they paid him for it. (They were paying us based on how few chips I could do it in.) Later I found out he got paid a bit more for it - like a few thousand dollars - than he said at the time, but we were kids, you know. He got paid one amount, and told me he got paid another. He wasn't honest with me, and I was huit. But I didn't make a big deal about it or anything.
故事的结尾是，我们最终在四天四夜里完成任务，而且，机器运转正常，共用零件45个，但我和斯蒂夫却患上单核白血球增多症。我与斯蒂夫平分了700美元——他们根据使用零件数计算报酬。但后来我发现斯蒂夫得到的并非他所说的700美元，而是更多，似乎有一千多美元。我们那时都不过还是孩子，他告诉我的数目与事实上并不相符，他欺骗了我，伤害了我。但是，我并没有对此小题大做。
Ethics always mattered to me, and I still don't really understand why he would've gotten paid one thing and told me he'd gotten paid another. But, you know, people are different. And in no way do I regret the experience at Atari with Steve Jobs. He was my best friend and I still feel extremely linked with him. I wish him well. And it was a great project that was so fun. Anyway, in the long run of money -Steve and I ended up getting very comfortable money-wise from our work founding Apple just a few years later -it certainly didn't add up to much. Steve and I were the best of friends for a very, very long time. We had the same goals for a while. They jelled perfectly at forming Apple. But we were always different people, different people right from the start.
在我心中，道德举足轻重，至今我仍不能真正明白他为何对我撒谎。但是，大家都知道人和人是不同的。对于在雅达利公司与斯蒂夫共度的时光，我也绝无遗憾可言。他仍是我的好朋友，我们仍情同手足，希望他一切顺利。而那项伟大的工程又是如此的有趣。不管怎样，创建苹果后的几年，我和斯蒂夫最终通过自己的聪明才智而一本万利，当然这也并不意味着什么，我和斯蒂夫是天长地久的最好朋友。我们曾经一度有着共同的理想，在建立苹果时达到极致，但我们始终是不同的人，从开始就是。
You know, it's strange, but right around the time I started working on what later became the Apple I board, this idea popped into my mind about two guys who die on the same day. One guy is really successful, and he's spending all his time running companies, managing them, making sure they are profitable, and making sales goals all the time. And the other guy, all he does is lounge around, doesn't have much money, really likes to tell jokes and follow gadgets and technology and other things he finds interesting in the world, and he just spends his life laughing.
奇怪的是，就在那段时间我开始着手研究后来的“苹果Ⅰ”模拟板。这一想法来源于不求同生但求同死的一对好兄弟，其中一人非常成功，他将毕生致力于管理公司，保证赢利，长期制定销售目标，而另一人则言谈幽默，对一些小玩意感兴趣，爱好技术等等，他在世界里挖掘趣闻，此生只为寻找欢笑。
In my head, the guy who'd rather laugh than control things is going to be the one who has the happier life. That's just my opinion. I figure happiness is the most important thing in life, just how much you laugh. The guy whose head kind of floats, he's so happy. That's who I am, who I want to be and have always wanted to be.
在我心中，欢笑的人生远比掌握管理权重要得多，不过这只是我的观点。我认为快乐是人生中最重要的事，这样的人似乎有点傻傻的，但却是快乐的，这就是我一直以来想要成为的人。
And that's why I never let stuff like what happened with Breakout bother me. Though you can disagree -you can even split from a relationship -you don't have to hold it against the other. You're just different. That's the best way to live life and be happy.
这也是我为何从不会将《突出重围》事件放在心上的原因。即使你不赞同，甚至认为我们的关系出现裂痕，也不必认为我们相互为敌，只是性格不同罢了，而这就是快乐生活的最好方法。
And I figured this all out even before Steve and I started Apple.
甚至早在我和斯蒂夫创造苹果之前，我就明白了这一道理。