2019-12-02
Remembering the IBM PC RT.. and its powerusage 6 months ago
For a number of years between 1993 and 1997 I not only had a BBS running at home but also an IBM RT 6150 computer. It was a bigtower I got for free including the system floppy disks. I had to reinstall it because I had no idea of the root password and the only contact at the previous owners wasn't willing to give it up. So I swapped 1.2 megabyte 5.25 inch floppies for a while until I had a complete running system with AIX complete with graphical environment and a working TCP/IP stack. The IBM RT 6150 I had came with 3 builtin harddisks (full-height). For as far as I remember those were 70 megabyte each. Eventually I had enough AIX installed to also have a working compiler. One downside of this system was the powerusage. It used quite a lot of electricity. The rest of BBS Koos z'n Doos also used a lot of power. When I moved out of my parents' house in a December month the effect on the electricity bill was remarkable. Next December my parents got a call about what changed because the electricity bill had halved. And I did put 'computers' on the form for the new electricity contract but that same december I received a bill because the electricity for that house was double what the electricity company expected.