Cleveland's National City plans a slow shift to PCs at branches.

National City Corp., the Cleveland-based superregional, has joined the rising tide of institutions revamping their branch automation systems.

However, unlike many institutions its size, $31 billion-asset National City will not rush to replace its dumb terminals with personal computers. Instead, the bank plans a slow migration to PC technology, beginning this summer.

The benefit of this strategy is that it relieves the bank from having to purchase several thousand new computers at once, which enables it to better manage the financial end of the hardware acquisition.

"We feel we have deferred spending upwards of $18 million on new hardware," said Anthony McEwen, senior vice president at National City.

During the transition to personal computer workstations, National City plans to use a teller system developed by Network Controls International Inc., Charlotte, N.C.

The system will be deployed in the bank's entire branch network, which consists of 610 locations in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana.

The system acts as a bridge between a dumb-terminal environment -- in which workstations have no processing power of their own -- and PC-based systems, which bring processing power to the desktop.

National City has approximately 4,000 model 4700 dumb terminals from International Business Machines Corp. installed in its branch network.

By linking these terminals with PC servers equipped with software from Network Controls, the dumb terminals are given many of the same capabilities featured on PC branch workstations.

The bank will buy 610 network servers -- one for each branch -- and run them with Network Controls' Banc-Mgr software.

The cost of the equipment was not disclosed.

In addition to handling the 4700s, the servers will run with networked PCs provided to the head teller at each branch.

While National City eventually plans to equip its remodeled branches with PCs, officials have not established a schedule for replacing the IBM terminals.

"As long as they continue to meet our needs, and the maintenance expense is less than buying new equipment, we intend to maximize the use of the [4700s]," Mr. McEwen said.

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