RCA’s Forgotten 1970s Mainframes That Almost Toppled IBM’s Dominance
In the early 1970s, RCA made a bold push to challenge IBM's dominance in business computing. The company launched a new line of mainframes designed to compete directly with IBM's offerings. Yet today, RCA's once-ambitious computer division is largely forgotten—except for its 1800 series of CPUs.
RCA unveiled the 2, 3, 5, and 6 Series computers in 1970, positioning them as faster and more cost-effective than IBM's machines. An IBM 360/30 with 65K memory rented for around $13,200 per month at the time. RCA's equivalent model, the RCA 2, offered double the memory and triple the performance for just $2,000 more.
The company also introduced virtual memory options, a rarity in the early 1970s. For an extra $3,500 per month, customers could get an RCA 3 with 2 megabytes per running job. RCA's systems were technically advanced, featuring one of the first demand-paging, virtual memory operating systems for mainframes. Despite these innovations, RCA struggled to gain traction. The company held less than 10% of the market, and rising costs forced it to sell its computer division to Sperry Rand in 1971. Sperry later rebranded some of RCA's machines and continued selling them for a time. A rare 1970s film even documented RCA's plans to become the second-largest supplier of business computers—an ambition that ultimately fell short. The systems were originally named after RCA's earlier Spectra 70 line, becoming the Spectra 70/2, 70/3, 70/5, and 70/6. But despite their technical strengths, they never seriously threatened IBM's lead.
RCA's exit from the computer market marked the end of its challenge to IBM. Sperry took over its remaining systems, but the brand's presence in computing faded quickly. Today, only the RCA 1800 family of CPUs remains widely recognised from this era.
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