![]() MCM Model 70 microcomputer, 1974 | |
Manufacturer | MCM Computers |
---|---|
Release date | 1974 |
Media | Cassette tape |
Operating system | APL language |
CPU | Intel 8008 @ 0.8 MHz |
Memory | 2 to 8 KB |
Display | Alphanumeric single line display |
Mass | 9 kg |
The MCM/70 [1] is a pioneering microcomputer first built in 1973 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada [2] [3] and released the next year. This makes it one of the first microcomputers in the world, the second to be shipped in completed form, and the first portable computer. The MCM/70 was the product of Micro Computer Machines, one of three related companies set up in Toronto in 1971 by Mers Kutt. It is considered by some historians[ who? ] to be the first usable personal microcomputer system. [4] [5] [6]
Kutt, a professor of mathematics at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario during the late 1960s, noted that the efficiency of computer users there was hampered by the long wait times involved in submitting programs in punched card form for batch processing by a shared mainframe computer. In 1968, Kutt and Donald Pamenter started a firm, Consolidated Computer Inc., [7] and began to produce a data-entry device named Key-Edit. [8] This was a low-cost terminal, with a one-line display device, which bypassed the need for keypunching.
In 1971, Kutt, no longer part of CCI, began planning a machine to support software development in the recently developed programming language APL. APL was best programmed using a custom keyboard and these were very rare at the time. He initially named his design the Key-Cassette; similar in design and concept to Key-Edit, it would offer editing ability and support for either two cassette decks or one cassette and an acoustic coupler to upload programs to other machines. [8]
The original design resembled a desktop electronic calculator. Kutt's notes of the era showed his intent to use the cover and display from an extant calculator with a modified power supply, to include a small keyboard with 32 keys, and a display made of either 13 or 15 segmented LEDs. [8] Kutt also created a company, Micro Computer Machines, which would later manufacture the devices.
Through his acquaintance with Intel founder Robert Noyce, Kutt had been following Intel's work on the 1201, an 8-bit microprocessor later renamed the Intel 8008. The processor was scheduled to be complete in late 1971, but its release was delayed until spring. In December 1971, Kutt incorporated a technology development company, Kutt Systems. He signed an agreement with Intel to supply an Intel 4004, a SIM4- 01 development system, supporting chips from the MCS-4 chipset, and an MP7-01 EPROM programmer to his new company. This equipment was used for early development work until the 8008 was available. [8]
Kutt hired programmer Gord Ramer, and the two began work on developing Kutt's concept. In May 1972, Kutt Systems received one of the earliest SIM8-01 kits. The team, now including hardware engineer José Laraya, software engineer André Arpin, and two APL programmers, Don Genner and Morgan Smyth, started to build what was then termed the M/C, for microcomputer. By then, the design had expanded to include a complete keyboard, a chiclet design similar to the ones used on early models of the Commodore PET, and a Burroughs Self-Scan 32-character display. [8] Unlike the earlier Key-Edit system, the M/C would allow entering and executing APL programs.
Dissatisfied with the SIM8 equipment, the Kutt Systems staff built a motherboard from scratch, including an Omniport, an 8008-expansion bus. Meanwhile, work on porting an APL interpreter to the system continued, using an 8008 emulator written in Fortran named INTERP/8 . The system, mocked up in breadboard form, was first displayed publicly on 11 November 1972 at the Kutt offices in Kingston, Ontario. [9] In May 1973, the same system was shown at the APL Users’ Conference in Toronto, now encased in fibreglass. [10] The completed design, in its new injection moulded case, was demonstrated for the press on 25 September 1973. [11]
The MCM/70, manufactured by Micro Computer Machines in Kingston, was encased in a wedge-shaped metal box about half a metre on a side, with a keyboard at the front, a compact audio cassette tape recorder(s) in the middle, [12] and a one-line plasma display at the top. The MCM/70 had a one-line display and alphanumeric keyboard, and optional had a second tape drive. It resembled desktop calculators of the time, such as HP 9830A.
An APL interpreter was built into the read-only memory (ROM), [13] and the machine included a battery which allowed it time to save the workspace automatically when it was turned off. The MCM/70 weighed 20 pounds (9 kg) [14] and shipped with up to 8 kilobytes of RAM and zero, one, or two cassette drives. [15]
The first complete systems were shipped to dealers in the autumn of 1974. The basic unit, model 720 with an 800 kHz 8008, [6] 2 KB RAM [16] and no cassette drive sold for $4,950 Canadian (at the time the dollar was about equal to the US dollar). [17] The fully equipped model 782 with 8 KB and two drives was $9,800, and was the only model that sold well.
At the time, the machine was already officially being called a "personal computer". The first manuals contain a personal note from Kutt to future customers, "But the simplicity of the MCM/70 and its associated computer language…make personal computer use and ownership a reality… Enjoy the privilege of having your own personal computer." [18]
The MCM/70 was sold mainly to companies and government institutions with the need to make complex calculations and mathematical analysis. MCM's customers ranged from hospitals and insurance companies to NASA and the United States Army. [19]
In 1975, the computer was rereleased with no changes as the MCM/700. [1] Also released that year were a punched card reader, plotter, and several programs. The MCM/800 followed in 1976. It was faster, included 16 KB RAM, and included the ability to drive an external monitor. Virtual memory was supported on all of the machines, although using cassettes for storage made it slow.
Released in 1978, MCM/900 was faster yet, included 24 KB RAM, and an included a monitor. The MCM/1000, also called the MCM Power was a repackaged /900, and was later repackaged again as the MCM MicroPower. The bigger change for the /900 and /1000 was to support the HDS-10 disk server, which included an 8.4 MB 8-inch Shugart hard drive, an 8-inch floppy disk drive, and a 64 k Zilog Z80 to control it. Up to eight /900s or /1000s could be plugged into the HDS-10.
By the late 1970s, after selling several hundred units, [15] MCM was facing competition from several home computer systems with the same computing power as their own machines. Although they were designing another more advanced microcomputer, termed A*2, the funding needed for rapid development was unavailable. By 1983, the firm had ceased operating.
Rights to the in-progress A*2 design were sold to Ampex. They worked on the design for about a year before also ceasing development. This machine, called Sysmo, was sold in France by Sysmo company from 1975. This start-up was funded in Paris by Michel Carlier, an engineer who had invested also in MCM, with his own capital. However, the machine was sold for management applications while it was programmed with a complex scientific language (APL) much better adapted to scientific and technical fields; Sysmo company filed for bankruptcy in 1978. The stock of MCM/Sysmo was bought by French company Generale d'Electricite (later Alcatel) for its own use because of the product's mathematical computing features.[ citation needed ]
In 2011, York University professor Zbigniew Stachniak published a book about the development of the MCM/70, titled Inventing the PC: The MCM/70 Story. [20] A collection of papers, illustrations and hardware related to the device have been included in the York University Computer Museum.
The IBM Personal Computer is the first microcomputer released in the IBM PC model line and the basis for the IBM PC compatible de facto standard. Released on August 12, 1981, it was created by a team of engineers and designers directed by William C. Lowe and Philip Don Estridge in Boca Raton, Florida.
The TRS-80 Micro Computer System is a desktop microcomputer launched in 1977 and sold by Tandy Corporation through their Radio Shack stores. The name is an abbreviation of Tandy Radio Shack, Z80 [microprocessor]. It is one of the earliest mass-produced and mass-marketed retail home computers.
A microcomputer is a small, relatively inexpensive computer having a central processing unit (CPU) made out of a microprocessor. The computer also includes memory and input/output (I/O) circuitry together mounted on a printed circuit board (PCB). Microcomputers became popular in the 1970s and 1980s with the advent of increasingly powerful microprocessors. The predecessors to these computers, mainframes and minicomputers, were comparatively much larger and more expensive. Many microcomputers are also personal computers. An early use of the term "personal computer" in 1962 predates microprocessor-based designs. (See "Personal Computer: Computers at Companies" reference below). A "microcomputer" used as an embedded control system may have no human-readable input and output devices. "Personal computer" may be used generically or may denote an IBM PC compatible machine.
The Intel 8008 is an early 8-bit microprocessor capable of addressing 16 KB of memory, introduced in April 1972. The 8008 architecture was designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) and was implemented and manufactured by Intel. While the 8008 was originally designed for use in CTC's Datapoint 2200 programmable terminal, an agreement between CTC and Intel permitted Intel to market the chip to other customers after Seiko expressed an interest in using it for a calculator.
A portable computer is a computer designed to be easily moved from one place to another, as opposed to those designed to remain stationary at a single location such as desktops and workstations. These computers usually include a display and keyboard that are directly connected to the main case, all sharing a single power plug together, much like later desktop computers called all-in-ones (AIO) that integrate the system's internal components into the same case as the display. In modern usage, a portable computer usually refers to a very light and compact personal computer such as a laptop, subnotebook or handheld PC, while touchscreen-based handheld ("palmtop") devices such as tablet, phablet and smartphone are called mobile devices instead.
The Datapoint 2200 was a mass-produced programmable terminal usable as a computer, designed by Computer Terminal Corporation (CTC) founders Phil Ray and Gus Roche and announced by CTC in June 1970. It was initially presented by CTC as a versatile and cost-efficient terminal for connecting to a wide variety of mainframes by loading various terminal emulations from tape rather than being hardwired as most contemporary terminals, including their earlier Datapoint 3300. However, Dave Gust, a CTC salesman, realized that the 2200 could meet Pillsbury Foods's need for a small computer in the field, after which the 2200 was marketed as a stand-alone computer. Its industrial designer John "Jack" Frassanito has later claimed that Ray and Roche always intended the Datapoint 2200 to be a full-blown personal computer, but that they chose to keep quiet about this so as not to concern investors and others. Also significant is the fact that the terminal's multi-chip CPU (processor)'s instruction set became the basis of the Intel 8008 instruction set, which inspired the Intel 8080 instruction set and the x86 instruction set used in the processors for the original IBM PC and its descendants.
The IBM 5100 Portable Computer is one of the first portable computers, introduced in September 1975, six years before the IBM Personal Computer, and eight before the first successful IBM compatible portable computer, the Compaq Portable. It was the evolution of a prototype called the SCAMP that was developed at the IBM Palo Alto Scientific Center in 1973. Whether considered evolutionary from SCAMP or revolutionary, it still needed to be plugged into an electric socket.
The Micro-Professor MPF-I is a microcomputer released by Multitech in 1981. The company's first branded product, it was marketed as a training system to learn machine code and assembly language for the Zilog Z80 microprocessor. After releasing several iterations of the product, Acer sold the product line to Flite Electronics in 1993.
The TRS-80 Model 100 is a notebook-sized portable computer introduced in April 1983. It was the first commercially successful notebook computer, as well as one of the first notebook computers ever released. It features a keyboard and liquid-crystal display, in a battery-powered package roughly the size and shape of a notepad or large book. The 224-page, spiral-bound User Manual is nearly the same size as the computer itself.
The history of the personal computer as a mass-market consumer electronic device began with the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s. A personal computer is one intended for interactive individual use, as opposed to a mainframe computer where the end user's requests are filtered through operating staff, or a time-sharing system in which one large processor is shared by many individuals. After the development of the microprocessor, individual personal computers were low enough in cost that they eventually became affordable consumer goods. Early personal computers – generally called microcomputers – were sold often in electronic kit form and in limited numbers, and were of interest mostly to hobbyists and technicians.
A personal computer, often referred to as a PC, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as word processing, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and gaming. Personal computers are intended to be operated directly by an end user, rather than by a computer expert or technician. Unlike large, costly minicomputers and mainframes, time-sharing by many people at the same time is not used with personal computers. The term home computer has also been used, primarily in the late 1970s and 1980s. The advent of personal computers and the concurrent Digital Revolution have significantly affected the lives of people in all countries.
Each time Intel launched a new microprocessor, they simultaneously provided a system development kit (SDK) allowing engineers, university students, and others to familiarise themselves with the new processor's concepts and features. The SDK single-board computers allowed the user to enter object code from a keyboard or upload it through a communication port, and then test run the code. The SDK boards provided a system monitor ROM to operate the keyboard and other interfaces. Kits varied in their specific features but generally offered optional memory and interface configurations, a serial terminal link, audio cassette storage, and EPROM program memory. Intel's Intellec development system could download code to the SDK boards.
Merslau "Mers" Kutt CM is a Canadian inventor, businessman and educator. He is a former professor of mathematics at Queen's University. Through his company, Micro Computer Machines, he is the developer of the world's first keyboard-based portable microcomputer.
The Micro-80 was the first do-it-yourself home computer in the Soviet Union.
SCELBI was an early model of microcomputer based on the Intel 8008 processor. The company SCELBI Computer Consulting in 1973, by Nat Wadsworth. The SCELBI 8H was marketed in 1974 and was delivered either as an assembled unit or as a kit, with five basic circuit boards and provision for memory expansion to 16 kB. The company offered input/output devices including a keyboard, teleprinter interface, alphanumeric oscilloscope interface, and a cassette tape interface for data storage. The basic system only used a front panel with 11 switches and LEDs for input and output.
Léanord was a French computer brand, founded in 1960 at Haubourdin, near Lille. It was a subsidiary of Creusot-Loire and started to develop computers in the late 1970s.
The Stratos was a Z80-based microcomputer introduced by Symbiotic Systems, Inc., in 1981.
The WS-1 was a laptop manufactured by the Japanese computer company Ampere, Inc. Unveiled in June 1984 as the BIG.APL and later released as the WS-1 in November 1985, the laptop was noted by journalists for its striking case design—rendered by Kumeo Tamura, one of the principal designers of the Datsun 240Z. Also noted was its early use of Motorola's 68000 microprocessor and the decision to use APL as its programming environment of choice.