CONCLUSIONS - Inventing the PC - page 168

Under favourable conditions, carrying out the plan outlined
in this letter would establish MCM as an undisputed leader in
the new distributed computing market. Sales of MCM /70s at the
predicted rate of 500-1,000 per month would generate enough
revenue to pay for the development of significant application
software and for the rapid construction of MCM 's new genera-
tion computers employing state-of-the-art microprocessors. But
in 1974, the corporate conditions at MCM were anything but
favourable. A devastating power struggle, employee unrest, and
financial difficulties pushed the company to the verge of col-
lapse. Instead of the thousands of MCM /70s planned for sales
and delivery in 1974, MCM managed to sell only a hundred or
so. In 1975, Berg still had time to keep MCM on the personal
microcomputer track. But, instead, the company responded to
the IBM 5100 threat by putting all its limited resources into
the ill-fated MCM /800, implemented quickly by remaking the
MCM /700 using bit-slice rather than microprocessor technol-
ogy. The gamble did not pay off and MCM was pushed out to
the fringes of the small systems market.
The MCM /70 promotional brochures presented the computer
as a cost-effective alternative to computer time-sharing services.
In 1974, large time-sharing companies, such as I.P. Sharp As-
sociates Ltd of Toronto, charged their clients, among other fees,
$8 per connect hour, 35 cents for each second of CPU time, and
$1 per 3,000 characters entered. Depending on an application, a
user could pay $25, $100, or more per connect hour. There was
not much a client connected to such a system via dumb terminal
could do in less than an hour. Therefore, assuming an average
rate of $100 per connect hour, it would take only about four
months at an hour a day to accumulate $9,500 in computing
charges - the price of a new and fully loaded MCM /700.
This same time-sharing economics was also behind IBM 's
introduction of its 5100 desktop computer. But IBM also had
another motivation to enter the desktop computer market. Since