I have the main unit.
type computer
country USA
year 1986
os AIX (IBM Unix), MS-DOS 3.2
cpu ROMP RISC
speed 5.88/10/12.5 MHz
ram 1 MB
disk 5,25″ 1.2 MB
graphic 720×512, 1024×768
colors 16
sound beeper
ports serial (2)
The IBM RT PC 6150 — IBM’s First RISC Computer
The IBM RT PC (RISC Technology Personal Computer), Model 6150, released in January 1986, was IBM’s first RISC-based commercial computer — a workstation that used IBM’s ROMP (Research OPD MicroProcessor) processor to bring RISC architecture to a commercial product. The RT PC was primarily targeted at academic and scientific markets, running IBM’s AIX Unix operating system and competing with Sun Microsystems workstations in university and research environments. While not a commercial success, the RT PC was historically significant as IBM’s first attempt to commercialise RISC technology — experience that directly informed the far more successful RS/6000 of 1990.
ROMP — The Research Processor
The ROMP processor used in the RT PC emerged from IBM’s research into RISC architectures at the Thomas J. Watson Research Center, where John Cocke and his team had developed the foundational concepts of RISC computing in the 1970s. The name ROMP stood for Research OPD (Office Products Division) MicroProcessor, reflecting its origins in IBM’s research division. Running at just 8 MHz, the ROMP was not particularly fast by the standards of the era — the RT PC was notably slower than competing workstations from Sun — but it provided IBM engineers with invaluable experience in RISC system design.
The Path to RS/6000
The RT PC’s commercial disappointment was an important lesson for IBM. The ROMP processor had been conservative in its RISC implementation, and the resulting performance was insufficient to compete effectively with Sun’s SPARC workstations. IBM’s engineers used this experience to design the far more ambitious POWER1 architecture, incorporating superscalar execution and aggressive floating-point hardware that would make the RS/6000 a true benchmark-breaker when it arrived in 1990.