The Making of the MCM/70 - Inventing the PC - page 48

specifications of the general architecture of the 8008 processor
and its instruction set - that is, the list of operations that the
microprocessor could perform - Ramer and Genner used the
assembler language for the IBM \360 computer to emulate the
operations of the 8008 chip. In other words, they replicated the
functionality of the 8008 chip on a mainframe computer. “So,
that way,” continued Laraya, “they could write the [ MCM / APL ]
code without having the actual machine.”
Ramer and Genner used an APL terminal located at St. Law-
rence College in Kingston and remotely connected to an IBM
computer at the University of Ottawa to do all the initial work
on MCM / APL . When the rack prototype of the microcomputer
was finally working in mid-1972 at MCM 's research and de-
velopment facility in Kingston, the software development could
be done directly on the 8008-based hardware and the MCM /
APL code could be transferred into EPROM s using Intel's MP 7
programmer.
In his notes, Kutt briefly sketches KSI 's directions for the
development of the APL language for the MCM /70 microcom-
puter. First, the basic, stripped-down version of APL \360 would
be implemented. He notes that such a restricted version would
be particularly useful for demonstrations of early prototypes of
the computer which likely would operate with a very limited
memory. Then the basic version of the language was to be ex-
tended in two directions to support the scientific as well as the
business use of the MCM /70.
In the end, Ramer's team created a single dialect of the
APL \360 language. Apart from APL functions, it supported a
limited but direct communication with the computer, making
its use more flexible and user friendly. “When we came up with
the APL [language] for our PC ,” commented Kutt, “our prime
target was to make it simple to use … so the user wouldn't have
to become embroiled in the little nitty-gritty things you have to
look after in APL .”