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<h2 id=OpenBSD>
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<i>Open</i><b>BSD</b></a>
romp
</h2>
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<table><tr><td>
<p>
There used to be an "OpenBSD/romp" effort to port OpenBSD to the IBM 6150
and 6151 machines, also known as RT/PC. These machines were IBM's first try
into the workstation world, in 1986, and are the ancestors of the RS/6000
machines of today.

<p>
However, nowadays, it makes little sense to port to a machine which can not
support more than 16 megabytes of memory.
</table>

<hr>

<h3 id="history"><strong>History:</strong></h3>

<p>
IBM's Academic Information Systems (ACIS) ported BSD to the
RT PC for educational sites not wanting to run AIX.
Initially 4.2BSD as Academic Information Systems (AIS),
and later 4.3BSD as Academic Operating System (AOS).
Mark Dapoz and Roger Florkowski later continued this effort with changes
from 4.3BSD-Reno and 4.4BSD-Lite.
<p>
The code eventually was released to the community in the late 1990's, with
uncertain license terms. People on the list started to play with the code,
fixing bugs in it, making it compilable with gcc, and slowly filling the gaps
between the 4.3BSD era and modern times. But unless someone dedicated to this
effort ends up having too much time on his hands, a free operating system
port will never happen.

<hr>

<h3 id="status"><strong>Current status:</strong></h3>

<p>
There is currently no code publicly available, however, people used to
work on the code, and patches used to flow privately or on the list from
time to time. Nothing has happened within the last ten years, though.
Contact <a href="mailto:miod@openbsd.org">Miod Vallat</a> if you are
deluded or want more information.

<hr>

<h3 id="projects"><strong>Projects (in no particular order):
</strong></h3>

<p>
<ul>
  <li>Fix romp backend bugs in gcc, and get it working in the gcc 2.95 tree.
  <li>Write code for binutils supporting the romp, rather than fixing the
      romp-specific as and ld; eventually, move to ELF
  <li>Get hardware documentation (some is available on bitsavers)
</ul>