English: Serial number 1042796

This machine was owned and run from new in 1980 by (name of firm), a small business making parts for trailers, in rural Falls, PA. The principal operator of the system was well 'into' programming it, and did a lot of screen design work and custom RPG programming for the business. I collected it from there on 28th October 2005. By all accounts it had been an astonishingly reliable system. During the 25 years they used it, it has received regular PM, has had a part on one of the hard disks (operator thinks the anti-static spring that runs against the spindle) changed since it was a bit noisy,, and it's got through a few print heads. That's *it*. No other faults or problems.

The System/34, model number 5340 in the IBM scheme of things, was essentially the System/32 on steroids - it came out only a couple of years later, but was much more capable - introduced the whole concept of a multiuser terminal-oriented system to the IBM midrange line (which had started off batch processsing punched cards with the System/3, you may recall!).