& COMPUTER HARDWARE DEVELOPMENT often involves a succession of hardware prototypes. These prototypes are often discarded once their functionality is tested, performance measured, and their faults detected and analyzed. Occasionally, functional prototypes are used for a short while for demonstration purposes during products’ preannouncements or unveiling to attract the attention of investors and technology commentators. And this is where the life cycle of prototyping typically ends. Fortunately, some computer prototypes survive and end up in museums where they are preserved for research as they may still hide the seeds of the success or failure of both the final products and the firms that embarked on constructing them, of technological breakthroughs and paradigm shifts that were yet to come. York University Computer Museum in Toronto has several prototypes of the MCM/70 microcomputer, which was possibly the earliest computer mass manufactured for personal use. The MCM/ 70 was designed by a Toronto-based electronics companyMicro ComputerMachines (MCM) in the early 1970s. I have written about the MCM/70 before. Yet, some key questions concerning the computer’s design and introduction to the market remained unanswered until additional prototypes of the computer were acquired by the museum and analyzed. The computer was publicly demonstrated for the first time during the APL V conference held in Toronto on May 15–18, 1973. Before the arrival of the prototypes at the museum, little was known about this historic presentation. Occasional remarks about the demo buried in oral histories gathered by the museum describe with confidence neither the demonstrated hardware, the scope of the demonstration, nor the reaction of the audience to the breakthrough concept of the portable computer for personal use. Another question that could not be fully answered before the resurfacing of the prototypes was how uncertainty in the company’s decisionmaking impacted its shaping and marketing of personal computing. In this article, I describe how the analysis of the MCM/70 prototypes allowed to answer these questionsmore fully.

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从原型中学习

& 计算机硬件开发通常涉及一系列硬件原型。一旦测试了它们的功能、测量了性能以及检测到和分析了它们的故障，这些原型通常就会被丢弃。有时，功能原型会在产品的预告或揭幕期间用于演示目的，以吸引投资者和技术评论员的注意。这就是原型设计的生命周期通常结束的地方。幸运的是，一些计算机原型幸存下来并最终保存在博物馆中以供研究，因为它们可能仍然隐藏着最终产品和开始构建它们的公司成功或失败的种子，以及技术突破和范式转变的种子。还没有来。多伦多的约克大学计算机博物馆拥有多个 MCM/70 微型计算机的原型，这可能是最早批量生产的供个人使用的计算机。MCM/70 是由多伦多电子公司 Micro ComputerMachines (MCM) 在 1970 年代初期设计的。我之前写过关于 MCM/70 的文章。然而，在博物馆获得额外的计算机原型并进行分析之前，有关计算机设计和市场介绍的一些关键问题仍未得到解答。该计算机于 1973 年 5 月 15 日至 18 日在多伦多举行的 APL V 会议期间首次公开展示。在原型抵达博物馆之前，人们对这一历史性展示知之甚少。博物馆收集的口述历史中对演示的偶然评论充满信心地描述了演示的硬件，演示的范围，以及观众对个人使用便携式计算机这一突破性概念的反应。在原型重新出现之前无法完全回答的另一个问题是公司决策中的不确定性如何影响其个人计算的塑造和营销。在本文中，我将描述对 MCM/70 原型的分析如何更全面地回答这些问题。在原型重新出现之前无法完全回答的另一个问题是公司决策中的不确定性如何影响其个人计算的塑造和营销。在本文中，我将描述对 MCM/70 原型的分析如何更全面地回答这些问题。在原型重新出现之前无法完全回答的另一个问题是公司决策中的不确定性如何影响其个人计算的塑造和营销。在本文中，我将描述对 MCM/70 原型的分析如何更全面地回答这些问题。