Moving a System/34

From: Richard Schauer <rws_at_ripco.com>
Date: Wed Sep 24 07:32:12 2003

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Norm Aleks wrote:
> Hi, folks. I just bought an IBM System/34 that's currently in
> Pennsylvania, and I need to move it to the Bay Area. Finding an
> appropriate shipper is not my problem (I've been through *that* enough).
> However, does anyone know what steps I should take to secure this system
> for shipping? I'm worried in particular about its hard disks -- it would
> seem very IBM-ish to have a manual way to park and secure the heads.

Boy, you must *really* want a System/34 to move it all that way. Then
again, I suppose they're getting pretty hard to find. The one I have is
the only one I've seen in person since I started collecting about 10 years
ago.

Yes, you need to park the drives. (Although more large drives that I can
think of require manual parking/locking than do it automagically, so I can
see where that's an IBM thing...) It's not hard, at least for the common
drive used (that I can't remember the size of at the moment- it's an 8"
drive, my unit has 4 of them). All you need is a long, fairly wide
straight-blade screwdriver. My drives have a (yellow?) sticker showing
exactly what to do. You stick it into a hole and give a slightly more
than quarter turn in the direction it'll turn.

If these directions are too vague (can you tell I haven't been inside the
S/34 lately?) I can take some pictures and put them up on the Web.

If your unit has the magazine feed floppy drive, you should probably
remove the disks from it. Keep in mind, it holds 23 disks. (2 10-disk
magazines plus 3 loose in the little wire racks)

Richard Schauer
rws_at_ripco.com
Received on Wed Sep 24 2003 - 07:32:12 BST