Last week I had the pleasure of visiting the York University Computer Museum (YUCoM). I was greeted by Zbigniew Stachniak (Ziggy), curator of the Museum and author of the book "Inventing the PC - The MCM/70 Story". The museum is about an hours drive from my home in Waterloo Ontario.

As the above poster indicates the museum specializes in Canada's contribution to the computing field.

The museum has a small selection of their large archive of Canadian computers on display. Since I was interested in the MCM/70 I first focused in on some of  the other MCM models that they had on display.

From left to right: MCM/900,  MCM/800, and an MCM Power.

There were a few other exabits that caught my eye.

On the left is a computer based on the MIL 8008 microprocessor, a Canadian version of the Intel 8008. In the middle is a very early Volker-Craig terminal. VC terminals were manufactured in Waterloo and designed by a couple of University of Waterloo grads Michael C. Volker and Ronald G. Craig starting in 1973. They were very popular at the University of Waterloo when I was there (1977-1982). On the right is a Hyperion, an early portable computer thought to be the first portable IBM PC compatible. It was marketed by Infotech Cie of Ottawa.

After a brief tour I got down to business taking a good look at the MCM/70 on display. 

I took many photos as I would be modelling the MCM/70 case based on them. One surprise was that the side panels, which I thought to be made of wood, are actually injection molded. I would never have realized this had I not had access to the real thing.

While I was taking my pictures Ziggy and I had a great talk about the machine; he is probably the world's leading expert on the MCM/70. I especially enjoyed our conversation about the emulator that he wrote for the MCM/70. Since the intent is to use the emulator for research purposes he spent a lot of time making sure that it worked precisely as the hardware did. Since he had a couple of MCM/70s available to him he was able to validate the emulator's faithfulness to the original.  We were also able to compare emulation techniques since I wrote an emulator for a Sol-20.  Nothing like spending an afternoon geeking out ;-)

So now I have what I need to get going on the MCM/70 case. Ziggy has graciously offered to provide more information should I require it.  I foresee spending a lot of time working with Fusion 360 over the next couple of weeks.