The Making of the MCM/70 - Inventing the PC - page 40

was happening in [circuit] integration,” explained Laraya. “So,
I was very impressed with what Intel had done with the [8008]
chip and I wanted to be one of the first to put together a [com-
puter] processor with it.” And indeed he would become one of
the very first engineers to build a general-purpose computer
powered by a microprocessor.
Laraya started his work on the MCM /70 computer in the first
months of 1972 by experimenting with Intel's SIM 8-01 proto-
typing system in the basement of his Kingston house. Looking
back at his early experimentation with the system, Laraya recol-
lected: “[ KSI 's] lab was in my basement. I had a house there [in
Kingston] and I had a good set up there … The first prototype
[of the MCM /70] was on the Intel development board … The
I / O [input/output] was a teletype, the ASR -33, paper tape. So
that was the first machine.” 3 He recalled how tedious it was to
program EPROM s with basic programs for use with this first
prototype. “Those days the [ EPROM ] chips were very slow to
program. You had to program [them] by hand, using switches.”
To put a code into an EPROM , one had to “set the switches
and the address [on an EPROM programmer], and hit [the] 'pro-
gram' [button]. And every time we programmed [a chip], Don
[Genner] used to smoke one cigarette and said 'that's how long
it takes to program a chip. I smoke one cigarette and when I
finish - it's programmed.'”
While the educational aspect of the experiments with the
SIM 8-01 board was invaluable, the hardware prospects were
rather discouraging. As Kutt remarks in his 1972 design notes,
this early attempt at building an APL microcomputer was a
disappointment. Kutt wrote that the machine “is useless as is”
and had to be “drawn up, rewired, and debugged.” In the end,
Laraya decided to abandon the SIM 8 approach and, instead, to
build his own hardware from the ground up. He remembered
thinking, “ OK , this [ SIM 8-01] is fine, great, interesting, works