--- title: IBM RT (6150) categories: - Computers types: - Professional Computer origins: - U.S.A. years: - '1986' cpus: - ROMP RISC processor params: name: RT (6150) company: /companies/ibm company_name: IBM specs: - label: NAME value: RT (6150) - label: MANUFACTURER value: IBM - label: TYPE value: Professional Computer - label: ORIGIN value: U.S.A. - label: YEAR value: late 1986 - label: BUILT IN LANGUAGE value: None - label: KEYBOARD value: Special RT 102-key keyboard, PC-AT layout. - label: CPU value: ROMP RISC processor - label: SPEED value: 5.88, 10 or 12.5 MHz (170, 100 or 80ns cycle time) - label: CO-PROCESSOR value: Memory Management Unit (MMU), optional 20 MHz Motorola 68881 Math coprocessor - label: RAM value: From 1 MB to 16 MB - label: ROM value: Unknown - label: TEXT MODES value: 80 chars. x 25 lines - label: GRAPHIC MODES value: 720 x 512 (mono or colour), 1024 x 768 (mono) - label: COLORS value: '16' - label: SOUND value: Beeper - label: SIZE / WEIGHT value: Unknown - label: I/O PORTS value: 2 x serial ports - label: BUILT IN MEDIA value: |- 1 or 2 5.25'' 1.2 MB floppy disc drives\ Up to three 40 MB or 70 MB hard disks - label: OS value: AIX, based on Unix System V, MS-DOS 3.2 - label: POWER SUPPLY value: Built-in power supply unit - label: PRICE value: From £9800 tabs: - photos photos: - title: BACK SIDE subtitle: '' text: No doubt, the 6150 hardware is very reliable and designed for a long use. image: null comments: - author: Darkstar (Germany) date: Wednesday 1st April 2020 text: |- Does anyone have an IPL ROM dump for the IBM RT PC? Is there any emulator already existing? Contact me e.g. on Twitter under DarkStar_1337 - author: Byron Adkins (Austin TX USA) date: Thursday 28th April 2016 text: |- The original (170ns) processor card supported an optional floating point coprocessor card based on the National Semiconductor NS32081 FPU. The next generation (100ns) processor card included a Motorola 68881 floating point coprocessor on the CPU card itself. The final (80ns) processor card supported a huge double-card floating point coprocessor, again in the coprocessor slot. If you search the Web for ''IBM SA23-1057'' you can download a PDF of the original RT product architecture. Note that the ROMP processor MMU, though a separate integrated circuit (at least initially), is tightly integrated with the RISC core and would not be called a co-processor today. - author: drGspot (croatia) date: Tuesday 11th October 2011 text: |- PowerPC story is far from over (2011.) ...from big box IBM iron (up to Power7)\ to 8+2 core Cell in Playstation 3, 3 core in Xbox360, single core Nintendo Wii, up to 11th generation of AmigaOne x1000 (2 GHz 64bit dualcore, PCI-E 16x)\ At IBM (Cloud/Linux) Forum we have just learned that 50 $ of TCP/IP traffic is done by non x86 chips... - author: Shane Hill (Austin TX USA) date: Tuesday 15th February 2011 text: '@Scott from the year 2003 - that may be true regarding RISC, however new technologies, such as pipelining and integrated instruction cache have made RISC obsolete for general computing applications.' - author: Grady Owens (Socorro, NM, USA) date: Thursday 15th January 2009 text: |- I was given an IBM RT/135 last year when a business firm was cleaning house$ unfortunately, they had lost both keyboard and mouse, meaning it would not boot (this machine cannot boot without a specific signal from the keyboard). After several months, a keyboard turned up, so I obtained it. Further unfortunate circumstances made themselves apparent upon booting - the firm had password-protected the system and completely forgotten about it. In order to solve this problem, I ended up making contact with several individuals on the original development team and a few other computer gurus who''ve had experience with this particular brand of machine. I now have full access, and the machine functions perfectly. I absolutely adore this system$ for the time it was released it was a decently-impressive unit, and this one in particular is one of the best performance-wise IBM ever released. In addition, the firm sprung for the ultra-huge 5081-12 color monitor, for which I have been able to obtain an original copy of the maintenance manual. The engineering that went into this system was amazing, and it certainly shaped the computer market into what it is today by introducing both the RISC architecture and the original Model M keyboard layout. Truly a marvelous piece of computer history. - author: Marcus (Earth) date: Saturday 19th August 2006 text: good!, I had one almost the same spec but I didn't have the pc processor, so I used the emulator program. It was my first 'pc', I used it for word processing - using 'e' and IBM internal email via a dial up link from home. Ran out of floor space, so come the millenium I junked it, gave the 5080 to a friend. BTW the big external disk was rare, but it was a 9336. - author: Scott Wentzka (Minneapoils, MN (USA)) date: Friday 27th June 2003 text: 'From the description: "Nowadays, RISC processors are quite no more used in desktop computers\[...\]". Well, the PowerPC chip used in all modern Macintoshes is a RISC chip, and the PowerPC can trace its lineage to the ROMP chip in the RT.' oc_id: 867 source: url: https://web.archive.org/web/20230609145511/http://www.old-computers.com/museum/computer.asp?c=867 date: '2023-06-09' --- The IBM RT (or PC/RT or 6150 in Europe) was a 32-bit RISC machine. In fact 'RT' meant 'RISC Technology' where RISC itself was initials of **R**educed **I**nstruction **S**et **C**omputers. This machine was IBM's first try into the single-user workstation world and was the ancestor of the RS/6000 range. The advantages of RISC technology were smaller processor chips, since they needed less on-chip storage for the instruction set, faster signal transfer between devices, and faster instruction execution since the reduced set was designed so that most instructions was executed in a single clock cycle. The RISC processor of the 6150 was called ROMP for **R**eshearch **O**ffice **P**roducts **D**ivision. Its study started in IBM Texas labs in 1977 and a prototype form ran in 1978 There were two RT models, the floor-standing 6150 and the desktop 6151. The differences between them lie in the positioning of some I/O ports and in the storage options available. Despite processor incompatibility with MS-DOS software, the 6150 could run PC software thanks to a PC expansion card holding a Intel 80286 and designed to fit in one of the AT compatible slots of the 6150. the motherboard featured four 32-bit expansion slots to hold the ROMP board, an optional floating-point accelerator board, and two 2 MB RAM boards; two 8-bit and six 16-bit PC slots. The 6150 operating system was called AIX for **A**dvanced **I**nteractive e**X**ecutive. It succeded to IBM OSes. In fact, it was just an Unix System V with Berkeley 4.2 enhancements and IBM adds for the 6150 environment. Among these adds, the VRM (**V**irtual **R**essource **M**anager) handled the interface between the Unix kernel and the specific 6150 harware it ran on. A DOS shell was also provided for MS-DOS applications. Nowadays, one finds RISC processors mainly in numerous small devices like PalmTops or mobile phones. Apple and IBM also use them today, the biggest examples being the PowerPC 7455 (G4) and PowerPC G5 Processor, mostly used in the Power Macintosh and Powerbook series of computers. Many Proprietary Unix systems used them up until only a few years ago (Sun, Silicon Graphics).