Request price quotation or RPQ is a long-standing IBM designation for a product or component that is potentially available, but that is not on the "standard" price list. Typical RPQ offerings are custom interfaces, hardware modifications, research or experimental systems, or variable-cost items. In the days of IBM's large mainframes, e.g. the System/360 and

System/370 The IBM System/370 (S/370) is a model range of IBM mainframe computers announced on June 30, 1970, as the successors to the System/360 family. The series mostly maintains backward compatibility with the S/360, allowing an easy migration path ...

series, many unusual features were flagged as "RPQ". A special-order software item is known as a Programming Request Price Quotation or PRPQ.

Examples

The standard

punched card A punched card (also punch card or punched-card) is a piece of stiff paper that holds digital data represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. Punched cards were once common in data processing applications or to di ...

code for the

groupmark character BCD (''binary-coded decimal''), also called alphanumeric BCD, alphameric BCD, BCD Interchange Code, or BCDIC, is a family of representations of numerals, uppercase Latin letters, and some special and control characters as six-bit character cod ...

on the

IBM 1401 The IBM 1401 is a variable-wordlength decimal computer that was announced by IBM on October 5, 1959. The first member of the highly successful IBM 1400 series, it was aimed at replacing unit record equipment for processing data stored on pu ...

computer system used punches in rows 12, 7, and 8 of a card column (written as 12-7-8). The older

IBM 705 The IBM 700/7000 series is a series of large-scale (mainframe) computer systems that were made by IBM through the 1950s and early 1960s. The series includes several different, incompatible processor architectures. The 700s use vacuum-tube lo ...

computer used 12-5-8 for this character. An RPQ was available for the 1401 for compatibility that allowed the system to read or punch the 705 code rather than the standard code. Since not all 1401 users would need this feature it was marketed as an RPQ. The features used by the Compatible Time-Sharing System to support time-sharing on the

IBM 7090 The IBM 7090 is a second-generation transistorized version of the earlier IBM 709 vacuum tube mainframe computer that was designed for "large-scale scientific and technological applications". The 7090 is the fourth member of the IBM 700/7000 se ...

and IBM 7094 were offered as RPQs.

References

IBM Procurement {{Compu-stub

Examples

See also

References