The Making of the MCM/70 - Inventing the PC - page 54

Models 158 and 168 - one of the first lines of mainframes to
operate with virtual memory.
The production model of the MCM/70
The work on the MCM /70 was finished in 1974 and was a re-
markable achievement of both the software and the hardware
engineers at MCM . The computer was small and portable, and
operated under sophisticated APL / AVS / EASY software. The
computer was packaged in a well-designed case that resembled
future popular personal computers such as Apple ][, introduced
by Apple Computer in 1977, or the Atari 800 released by Atari
Corporation the following year. The MCM /70's built-in key-
board was well-designed and provided both alphanumeric and
special APL characters.
Although the little plasma display screen could only display
thirty-two characters at any given time, a user could enter up
to eighty-five characters to form a single line of input. In cases
where the number of characters typed exceeded the thirty-two-
character limit, the computer would automatically shift all the
characters it was currently displaying one position to the left
as each additional character was entered. A user could use the
“arrow keys” of the keyboard to scroll left, right, up, and down
to view all the characters entered on possibly multiple lines.
In other ways, the computer was like a digital calculator, as
envisioned by Kutt. Without any knowledge of computer hard-
ware, installation procedures, or machine language program-
ming, a novice computer user could operate an MCM /70 and
execute simple programs almost instantly. One just had to plug
the computer into a power outlet and press the START key.
When the little screen displayed the “ MCM / APL ” prompt, one
could type (3×4)+6 and the computer would respond with 18
on the screen. Of course, more advanced applications required
a detailed study of MCM / APL and the MCM /70's operating
system.