Reading Is Still Useful

After a long while, the radio finally returned to normal, playing the music from the cassette tape.

"Sweet honey, your smile is so sweet, like flowers blooming in the spring breeze..."

The unknown singer actually had a rather pleasant voice.

"That's just the problem. It only acts like this when it first starts up, and then it gradually gets better. I don't know why..."

As the uncle spoke, he suddenly felt uneasy.

He had once sought out several merchants, hoping to get this thing repaired.

However, these merchants didn't dare take the job, because if they broke it, they would have to pay for it.

These ancient electronic products were extremely delicate; perhaps just touching them a few times could cause a wire inside to snap.

What's more, the various components for the radio had long since ceased production.

Even if a factory were to produce them, they wouldn't be worth anything. An antique is an antique because of its "age"; if you installed modern electronic components into an ancient instrument, how would that be any different from slapping a medicinal plaster on it?

Since it could still play normally, the uncle just had to make do with it.

Zhang Yuan walked up to the radio, eager to try: "Let me take a look at it!"

"That... sigh."

"Go ahead and try."

The tone was clearly one of distrust.

The uncle felt miserable inside, feeling that he had been too cocky.

Although his nephew was impressive and studied "Spaceship Management"—even capable of repairing spaceships—repairing a spaceship and repairing a radio were worlds apart!

The most critical thing was that he couldn't possibly make his nephew pay for it if he broke it!

Seeing Zhang Yuan's hands already touching the radio, his heart tightened painfully!

But for the sake of face, he couldn't say much more, only glaring fiercely back at his daughter.

Ye Qingqing didn't back down, glaring right back at her father with a smile blooming in her heart. In her view, such an antique had long been out of production, and even the design blueprints had been lost, so who could possibly repair it?

Especially since... dealing with minor glitches is actually far more difficult than dealing with major ones.

Defeating her cousin, the "child of someone else," would finally allow her to vent, and it seemed like it could prove that "studying is useless," perhaps allowing her to study a little less in the future...

At this moment, Zhang Yuan had already unscrewed the radio's casing, exposing the electronic structure inside: switches, power supply, variable capacitors, potentiometers, magnetic rods, and so on. It wasn't too complex.

It was precisely because these things were not complex that they had withstood the test of time and survived until now.

The more complex and delicate something is, the easier it is to break. Very few Huawei or Apple smartphones from the 21st century had survived; every single one that remained could fetch a sky-high price.

Zhang Yuan had never repaired such an antique before; this was a brand-new challenge.

If it were in the past, he might have avoided it, but now, he felt a strange, eager desire to explore.

He took a deep breath, and his brain began to run at high speed.

He tried to infer how this radio worked based on the knowledge he had learned in the past.

Any electronic instrument is essentially about electronics and magnetic fields; the essence is much the same. The working principle of a radio is nothing more than converting audio signals through various circuit structures.

"And since this radio was just playing a cassette, the antenna, variable capacitor, and detection circuit basically weren't being used. The noise at the beginning is unlikely to be caused by these parts..."

"Could it be a problem with the cassette?"

Zhang Yuan took out the cassette, manually reset it, and pushed it back in.

"Sweet honey, your smile is so sweet..."

This time, it played from the beginning without any noise in the middle.

Zhang Yuan swapped in another cassette and pressed the play button.

"I can never love you enough..."

Still, there was no noise.

"So, it probably isn't the cassette's fault."

The uncle watched him making attempt after attempt, becoming increasingly anxious, and hurriedly said: "It only makes that noisy sound when it first starts up, and then it goes away. If it really doesn't work... just forget it..."

His heart remained tight, hoping only that his nephew would realize the difficulty and give up.

Don't break it.

Lord, please don't break it!

"It only happens at the beginning?" Zhang Yuan waited for a while, then took the radio and placed it under the air conditioner to blow for ten minutes.

He plugged it back into the power source, and sure enough, the cooled-down radio began to roar again.

"Buzz—buzz!"

The shrill sound made his liver ache.

It took a long while before it finally quieted down.

Zhang Yuan looked thoughtful.

The entire process of troubleshooting the error was somewhat similar to debugging in computer programming. Now that the cause of the bug had been identified, he only needed to find the reason and resolve it.

Zhang Yuan paced back and forth in the room, quickly thinking through the suspicious points.

Poor contact?

No, poor contact wouldn't cause it to roar at the beginning; it would only cause intermittent operation.

"It's not the phenomenon of a microphone picking up electrical interference either."

After thinking it over, it was very likely a preheating issue.

This old-fashioned radio used vacuum tube technology.

Inside this nearly vacuum-sealed chamber were two main components: one called the heater, located in the center of the tube, which would glow when in operation; the other consisted of a cathode, a metal grid, and a metal plate.

"If the vacuum tube doesn't warm up according to the rules in the circuit, it will cause voltage instability throughout the entire circuit. This portion of erratic voltage is mistakenly transmitted to the subsequent amplification circuit, and thus, when there is no electrical signal, the radio roars."

"And finally, when the radio frequency circuit is fully heated and the vacuum tube voltage is adjusted, everything returns to normal, and the radio works properly."

Zhang Yuan clapped his hands; that must be the reason!

Seeing Zhang Yuan pacing back and forth while just eating fruit, the uncle-in-law felt his mood sour: what kind of normal repairman would walk around like that?

Ye Qingqing just pursed her lips and giggled.

Zhang Yuan lowered his head, squinting his eyes, and began to remove the vacuum tubes one by one.

He really started taking it apart!

I...

The uncle-in-law was practically on the verge of tears, shivering all over: "Zhang Yuan, if it really doesn't work, let's just go to a professional antique repair shop! I know a very skilled master... it's just that the price is a bit high."

Zhang Yuan turned a deaf ear, wholeheartedly devoted to his work. He truly hadn't heard what the uncle-in-law was saying.

He rearranged the order of the vacuum tubes, tightened the screws one by one, and waited for the radio to cool down.

The uncle-in-law's face turned red, and he couldn't help but mutter to himself: won't it be broken? Are there any extra parts left over?

Even the aunt couldn't bear to watch anymore: "Look at how nervous you are, it's just a radio, what's the big deal?"

"What do you know? Even if it's just a radio, do you know its history? It's very..."

Zhang Yuan didn't answer; he simply pressed the play button.

Click—

The radio was like a docile sheep, warming up obediently, with no more static noise.

"Tian Mi Mi, you smile so sweetly..."

The soft, beautiful singing echoed in the air.