6 Jan
2008
6 Jan
'08
7:12 p.m.
Liam Proven wrote:
On 05/01/2008, madodel <madodel at
ptdprolog.net> wrote:
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.
jd wrote:
You are very confident for someone asserting that another person has
not seen something that they say they have. How can you know?
Jules Richardson wrote:
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. 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. 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
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