IBM PC-RT 6150 looking for help

[Doc Shipley]

On 6/15/19 2:19 AM, Peter Turczak via cctalk wrote:
> In preparation of moving, I dug out a IBM 6150 PC-RT from my basement.
> This was my first proper computer as a child, which was donated to me by
> a local company that upgraded their CAD system. So it would be
> interesting to bring it back to life.
> 
> The machine is equipped with an 320 MB ESDI, 10 MBit Baseband Ethernet
> adapter and an IBM Megapel graphics adapter.
> 
> This baby was quite a sight in 1993 when I got it, with its elegant
> console font designed by Knuth.
> 
> Now I'm trying to revive the old machine, but there are some hassles:
> 
> The hard disk seems to be stuck or the drives electronics are broken, it
> does not spin up. As these drives are quite rare, I'm looking for the
> SCSI card (Model 6lX700l). Is it right, the PC-RT can boot off SCSI?
> 
> While I made images of the install floppies, it seems the AIX base
> system 2.0.0. disk #1 is missing. The AIXWindows floppies where not
> imaged and seem to be unreadable. Otherwise all VRM/extendes svcs, etc
> floppy images are at hand.

   I had a PC-RT awhile back that came with dead hard disks.  I got AIX 
going with an ISA IDE adapter and a 1GB IDE drive.

This was a long time ago and the details are hazy, but maybe this is 
enough to get you started:

   I don't remember the nature of the limitations on both IDE adapter 
and disk.  I do remember that I needed an adapter that allowed disabling 
the floppy interface (or didn't have one), that later IDE chipsets did 
not work, and that there was one IDE instruction that the disk drive 
needed to *not* support.  The <2GB Seagate Medalist series were known to 
ignore that instruction and my Medalist 1GB worked.


Doc