novellk Chapter 4 Openly and honestly stealing skills
Chapter 4 Openly and honestly stealing skills
The two of them worked together to move the enormous machine into the already cramped living room and wiped it inside and out with a rag.
This is a flat-lying frame, with the CRT screen, embedded in a wooden frame, slightly raised at an angle. This is a very common design that allows players to sit and play the game.
"Holy crap..." Lin Lixin circled it once, muttering to himself, "Are you sure this thing still works?"
They changed the water twice just now to clean this thing out!
Two pots!
"Uh..." Sam plugged it in, but there was no response. His face scrunched up in a frown.
"That shouldn't be the case. The boss charged me $800! This thing should still work."
Sam's tone shifted from unwavering confidence to hesitation, and most of the excitement in his voice had faded.
That was $800! He bought it with the thought that "I'll definitely break even with Jesse's legendary game," and reluctantly emptied his wallet to pay for it.
If this thing doesn't work, then I'll really be a huge fool.
Thinking of this, Sam angrily slapped the screen, trying to revive the machine through this traditional but efficient method.
No matter how brutally he tortured the arcade machine, it remained completely still.
This thing is really a piece of junk!
"Damn it, Jesse." Sam's face fell. "I think I've been ripped off by that old man."
Lin Lixin was speechless. This idiot, didn't he know to test the power before the handover?
He carried back the $800 item without even blinking.
"Aren't you good at fixing electronics? You even fixed my Atari 2600 for me."
Lin Lixin suddenly remembered that there was always a soldering iron on Sam's desk, mixed in with all sorts of random electronic products, which often made him worry that it might one day become the source of a damn fire.
"SHIT, I'd forgotten I had that trick up my sleeve!"
Sam's eyes widened, as if he had just remembered that he knew this trick, and he excitedly ran into the room, carrying out a whole bunch of odds and ends with a clatter.
A new piece of knowledge was injected into Lin Lixin's mind.
A few minutes later, Sam climbed out of the cage dejectedly and scratched his head.
"This isn't working. The monitor seems fine, so why is there no image?"
Those few moves he just made used up all the experience he had.
"How about... I take a look?"
Lin Lixin licked his lips, pulled Sam aside, and crawled inside himself.
Instead of focusing on the monitor that had no display, he turned his attention to the motherboard.
"Let me see, this should be the problem."
He repeatedly pressed several pluggable chips to rub off the poor contact caused by oxidation on the chip's gold fingers, and then drilled them out without checking other places.
"Let's try turning it on."
Sam looked him over suspiciously. When did Lin Lixin become knowledgeable about hardware? Wasn't he a software specialist?
But when he reconnected the power to the arcade machine and turned it on, his expression froze.
The image consisting of blue lines and yellow dots appeared on the screen. Although it was somewhat dim due to the aging of the picture tube, it was a genuine success in turning on the machine.
He stared blankly at Lin Lixin beside him.
How come this guy fixed the problem in less than a minute after I spent the whole night trying to figure it out?
"You...you know about this?"
"I know a little bit." Lin Lixin chuckled. "I secretly learned a trick from you when you were fixing the machine earlier, and I thought it would work. I didn't expect it to actually work."
"..."
Sam learned a lesson: never take Lin Lixin too seriously.
That doesn't make sense, damn it.