offer - OS/2 for the PDP-11

[madodel]

Liam Proven wrote:
> On 05/01/2008, madodel <madodel at ptdprolog.net> wrote:
>> jd wrote:
>>> Jules Richardson wrote:
>>>> jd wrote:
>>>>> Jules Richardson wrote:
>>>>>> (Having said that, some ATM machines in the UK ran OS/2 for years after
>>>>>> it was a dead OS elsewhere - [snipsnip] )
>>>>>>
>>>>> It's been used in some ATM's in the States, too. People have mentioned
>>>>> getting to the desktop or a shell and manipulating ATM's from there,
>>>>> somehow.
>>>> Weird. I've certainly seen at least one UK ATM fall over and break out
>>>> of its program (this was quite a few years ago) - but I'm amazed that
>>>> anyone would design an ATM in such a way that the keypad buttons were
>>>> directly readable by the native OS for just that reason.
>>> Considering how naive about physical and electronic security just
>>> about everyone was then, I would not be at all surprised. This was at
>>> about the time OS/2 first came out and found it's way into industrial
>>> equipment, I think. The KISS mentality was still in full effect and
>>> hardware design for ATM's still consisted of collecting off-the-shelf
>>> components and tossing them together. An ATM would have just one
>>> console and that would be the front monitor and keypad, often by
>>> default, and the rear monitor and keypad or keyboard, if so equipped,
>>> that would require using a hardware or software switch, like those old
>>> Inmac KVM-without-the-M switch boxes. Of course, for convenience, it
>>> was possible to do stuff from the front keypad, such as use a
>>> maintenance menu. Eventually, when ATM design evolved, such convenient
>>> features faded into oblivion.
>> I have never seen an OS/2 based ATM at a command prompt.  It must have been
>> a windoze based ATM.  And many ATMs still run OS/2.  It is only being
>> replaced by windoze on new models since IBM refused to support the hardware
>> any more.
> 
> You are very confident for someone asserting that another person has
> not seen  something that they say they have. How can you know?
> 

I've been using OS/2 since version 1.3.  I'm fairly well acquainted with 
its capabilities.  Yes I can be wrong and maybe you saw what you think you 
saw, but all you have is a story.  Where is your proof other then that you 
think you saw it was OS/2?   I can't prove a negative, but you should be 
able to prove that it did happen.

> Lots of ATMs & other bank financial systems ran OS/2. I have watched
> staff at 2 of the banks I deal with routinely - the Woolwich Building
> Society (now owned by Barclays) and Nationwide Building Society
> working with OS/2 systems in the last year.
> 
> I, too, have also encountered crashed ATMs which have dropped to an
> OS/2 command prompt, several times. I used to be an OS/2 user myself;
> that [C:\] prompt is very distinctive. On at least one, the keypad did
> still generate numbers, too; alas, I had no Alt key, or I could have
> entered ASCII, very slowly, and who knows, given long enough, maybe
> worked out how to persuade the thing to empty its cash drawers for me.
> :¬)
> 
> But with no Alt and no Enter, there's not much you can do except type numbers.
> 

If this were a common occurrence then we would be able to find some 
documentation of it other then just someone's antidotal remembrance that it 
might have happened and it might have been OS/2.  There is ample evidence 
of crashed windoze ATMs on the net.  Like I said I have never seen that. 
But I've never seen a crashed windoze ATM either.  I have seen broken ATM's 
but never at an OS/2 prompt.  And as I also posted, if the original ATM 
code programmer had known what they were doing then the program itself 
should have been set as the shell, so no command prompt should have ever 
been attainable.

Mark




-- 

  From the eComStation Desktop of: Mark Dodel

  Warpstock 2007 - Toronto, Ontario, Canada: http://www.warpstock.org
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