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The IBM System/38 was a computer. It was a precursor to the AS/400 which was later called the iSeries. This was the brainchild of IBM engineer Frank Soltis. Introduced in 1978 and commercially available in August 1979, it followed the System/34 and was actually prior to the System/36. It was also a descendant of the fabled IBM 'FS' project, which was designed to be a follow-on/replacement for the System/360 and System/370.
The System/38 was nearly called the System/380, and the AS/400 was nearly called the System/40.
System/38 and its descendants are unique in being the only existing commercial capability architecture computers. The earlier Plessey 250 was one of the few other computers with capability architecture ever sold commercially. Additionally, the System/38 and its descendants are the only commercial computers ever to use a machine interface architecture to isolate the application software and most of the operating system from hardware dependencies, including such details as address size and register size.
The System/38 also has the distinction of being the first commercially available IBM server to have a RDBMS.
IBM sold an estimated 20,000 S/38s within the first five years of availability, according to articles published in industry magazines NEWS 34/38 and Midrange Computing. Because S/38 was very much more expensive than S/34 and S/36, not as many units were sold, but the operating system was extremely advanced and was retooled into the AS/400. The iSeries computers were still being sold in 2006.
The advanced operating system of the System/38 was called CPF ("Control Program Facility.") CPF is not related to SSP, the operating system of the IBM System/34 and System/36.
Languages supported on the System/38 include RPG III, COBOL, BASIC, and PL/I. The operational control language of the System/38 was called CL ("Control Language"). CL programs are compiled.
"System/38"