The PDP-11/34 concept was created by Bob Armstrong, he completed the machine in 1976. The machine can be considered the most successful member of the PDP-11 line as it was the best selling model of this computer family. Its success was due to the fact that it was enormously versatile, yet affordable for smaller companies, too. The PDP 11 machines placed in rack cabinets and until 1990, they were typical computers of Western European colleges and institutions.

The central unit of the machine consisted of two separate circuit boards containing several moderately integrated chips. It had a 18-bit memory management and could address 256 KB.

The CPU, memory, and peripheral controller card were connected to a common UNIBUS. The devices were able to communicate with each other through the CPU that assigned the tasks. The machine came with a DEC hard copy terminal as standard equipment but the VT100 video console was also popular to display the data. Several options could be chosen to store the data. For storing a lot of data, the tape was the most appropriate choice. The tapes were rolling in a TU55 DEC tape drive or later in its upgraded TU56 version. The best alternative for a faster data storage was offered by the hard drives. Most users used an RA80 unit, which could hold 121 MB of data. If you had liked to carry your data, the right choice would have been the RX01-inch floppy drive.

There were many operations systems available for this machine. The most frequently used one was the RX11 which was very similar to the widespread DOS. It is interesting to note that a quiet early UNIX version have been already written for the PDP-11/34 computer.

The legendary line of machines is represented in our exhibition by the 11/34 model of 16-bit from the 1970s.