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Linux On a Used Cash Register
codewolf writes: "Looking at this site, it seems that if someone has enough time on their hands, they can get Linux to run on just about anything. Looks like this guy got Red Hat Linux running on an Ultimate Techonologies Corporation cash register. This is a great hack if you ask me."
Now we can get all our stuff free from the Linux counter :)
I'd hate to see a port of WinCE on a cash register, Imagine the small print on the back of the receipt.
"...you agree by paying this amount, to never divulge what you paid, or purchased, in any form, written, recorded, or electronicly transcribed in any way, to anybody. By having this receipt, you are violating the EUCEA (End User Cash Exchange Agreement) and must distroy this document, or face an audit of all digital processing and storage devices you own."
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Linux is a POS operating system...
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
...until I see an old, beat up, chrome covered toaster from the 60's running linux...
...wait a sec, with those mini-itx boards it'd just about be possible...
Shit. I gotta lay off the caffine.
?
If you actually read the product info you can (for the 'logic unit') either use a:
* ASCII Terminal (Just connect to a *nix box)
* PC (Just install linux)
* NC (Can anyone say X)
Now, yes this IS cool, but it's equivilent to someone isntalling linux on a weird looking PC with some cool peripherals.
/* FUCK - The F-word is here so that you can grep for it */
The touch screen version. Always thought one would make a sweet X terminal, and if it can run win95 with our P.O.S. POS software, it can run something decent...
Click here if you just like to click on shit.
This POS is still a computer so what is the big deal about this? The CueCat that is attached to it is a more impressive hack.
... to add up your shopping using dc?
Bob.
Kinda neat, but its a P233 pc. Really the only cool thing is the led display. I have an old IBM thermal printer that uses fax paper also, used it on my c64. Now put linux on a c64 (load "linux",8,1) and I will be impressed.
POS machines are nothing more than PC computers with extra serial ports and different peripherals than "normal" PCs. And the POS software normally runs on DOS or Windows (*gasp*) ;-)
I really don't see what the big fuss is about, I mean, I've installed Linux on a few different POS machines myself, (I work for a company that makes POS software), and it's just like setting up Linux on a normal PC except for the peripherals.
I think that getting the display pole is pretty schweet, however the "embedded PC" at the cash register is not anything unexpected. I have a pair of SASI terminals that used to belong to a CoastalMart in town. They had a log 16bit ISA card that connected their peripherials to the box as well as a laptop's 1.2GB HDD downsized to 500MB.. (1024,16,63... familiar?) All I had to do was remove the propietary card that contained a bootROM and voila, a perfectly good P200,32mB RAM 4MB ATI video.. These had PCI in them as well.. One's my router and one is my webserver.. If you are a hardware freak, like I am, you are always on the constant lookout for embedded boxes of this sort.. Cash registers are higly sought out after for this reason... After all, why use a suitcase for a router when you have a shoebox available..
Good catch on the hardware!!
Partnership for an idiot free America!
L'ânePOS is a linux/postgres Point of Sale system.
http://l-ane.sourceforge.net/nic.html
Based on a ThinkNIC, but can be used with any system
Jarett
Just goes to show that Linux will run on any old POS.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
Don't worry, it's how you use it that makes you a man.
Sorry, couldn't resist.
WWJD.... for a Klondike bar?
Don't ask why... Some things just need doing.
:)
Definitely an excellent reason for this project. I can't think of a better one
I'm only surprised that the first use of the display pole was not for uptime/load....
I think that this is actually a little smaller...
Look at the bottom of the page.
There's a Linux shell for TI-89!
http://www.ticalc.org/pub/89/asm/shells/
Now for more wierdness...how about Linux on an oscilloscope? I know a guy who wrote "pong" for it using anolog circuits. Perhaps someone should take it further.
They could use a TV remote as the interface and an adapted LCD driver chip to do it cheap...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
This is fun and whatnot, but SFW? You have full access to the kernel and everything, so what an excellent way of spending your weekend. A company that I work for, is hacking Linux to work on a embedded medical device eg. /dev/cashdrawer?
Do you have to mount
J.
Apparently it still operates as a cash register while running Linux... except that it keeps insisting that anything run through it should be costing $0.00.
well, hmmm, sure looks like it's just a PC underneath, pentium processor, 30MB of memory, IDE hard disk, in which case it's not exactly anything special. now the Display on a stick on the other hand, that would be cool.
Software Freedom Day!.
I agree
I checked out the site, and it seems that not only is the chip a PENTIUM MMX 233.
He changed the graphics card
He could not get it to run with 4Mb ram and so threw in a 32Mb stick.
Really not much of a hack there if you ask me. Only the LED is impressive.
Live today. Tomorrow will cost a lot more!
I thought it was quite nice the Cash Register people told him how to get the display on a stick working. That's what I call support...
"Information wants to be paid"
It also had nothing to do with porting Linux to a Cash register.
He just installed it and had to get the attached "LEDs on a stick" and a cuecat to work through a standard interface. Not a challenge. I was just making the article a little bit more worth while/humorous to read.
) Human Kind Vs Human Creation
) It'd be interesting to see how many humans would survive to serve us.
Just like most Point Of Sale machines, they are just PC's with extra hardware. That is, if they bother. Many are just plain jane PC's, with things like the pole display and cash draw all driven by the printer, while the barcode scanner is plugged in through a keyboard wedge, so it emulates keyboard input.
If you're so interested in this, try developing a whole graphical (note: graphical as in has to look similar to their existing Windows setup) Point Of Sale system that will be using FrameBuffer, that will end up running on 486-dx33's, with 16 meg of RAM, and a whopping 420 meg of h/drive space. The place I work for is doing this for an Australia wide chain so that they can install it on their existing hardware. They are in a 'contract' with the old POS supplier to keep the hardware on the desks for a few more years. Poor bastards!
We have most of the extra hardware working (a whole 2 extra serial ports - and while it has a PCMCIA flash card reader, it isn't even worth the worry). The Point Of Sale program itself is written in Kylix (was originally a Delphi app on Windows), using SDL as an interface between the FrameBuffer and Kylix. Fun fun fun!!
and people actually sell linux PoS systems,
0 1- 1.htm
http://www.internetweek.com/ebizapps01/ebiz0716
http://www.viewtouch.com/poshome.html
Software Freedom Day!.
The article is not without a cool edge though :
She yoinked the RAM figuring I could use it. She's my main lady, and I can't extoll the virtues of marrying a geek grrrl enough. The new RAM works and Tracy r0x0rs.
Credit where credit is due too: quality photos, good description, up in HTML. Doing cool stuff is one thing, writing a reasonable report quite another. Kudos still goes to this dude.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
I remember back in my younger years finding a cash register that ran OS/2... I got bored one day and started pressing key sequences for different operating systems that minimize full screen windows, and before I knew it I was looking at the OS/2 PM on a 6" black and white screen. My only thought at that point was, "this thing can run Quake!" :^)
Slashdot's first reaction to VMware
We got hold of some old cash register machines (IBM). It has DOS installed (used under some AS/400 system), but it wasn't good enough.
..Mozilla!
We tried Windows 98 and Windows NT, but all we came up with was a crashing machine. After struggeling with the MS-based OSes, we tried Linux. Everything matched together and we got everything to work!
We had some problems with X, but that solved after we added a GeForce2MX graphiccard to the machine, so now you could probably play Quake2 with quite good FPS =) Oh well, the Cyrix 233MHz processor is not that fast.
Next week they will be in production, and the main interface is...
Here are some early experiments with the machine (running bitchX).
So now that someone has shown the world how relatively easy it is to get a PC operating system running on a cash register, Microsoft has no excuse not to stand on the shoulders of this research and port Windows XP (which already runs some ATMs).
Then MS's propaganda/marketing machine will begin a campaign to warn retailers about "the dangers of using an operating system written by hackers." It would probably be something along the lines of "Linux could suck the cash right out of the drawer and send it over the internet to some hacker's Swiss bank account."
Extrapolated ridiculousness follows:
- Supermarkets buy subscriptions to Windows XP...
- You pay an extra 25 cents at the checkout...
- Every now and then the store manager tells you to put your stuff down and come back tomorrow because some hacker exploited the Win XP feature that was intended to allow the cash registers to talk to toaster ovens over the Internet.
- Microsoft patiently waits to see what else we can port Linux to...
Personally, I'd like to see someone get Linux running on my optical Intellimouse Explorer... Apache has been run on less hardware IIRCAnd I thought my wife carried everything in her purse.
Nothing to see here. Move along.
A real good challenge would be Linux for Furby...
At the end, the guy said he was syslogging it to a printer, and would like to have that serve as a caller ID someday. Why not just use the display as caller ID? It would be perfect. I suppose he could also print it, to have a record of it, but displaying it would be great (don't have to get up to see it.)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Linux has been ported to uCsimms, Palm devices, inventory devices (wireless inventory machines at Hahn have been running eDesktop for a while now), TiVos, web cameras, you name it.
This doesn't sound all that new to me...
Can you imagine a beowulf cluster of these *whack* ouch!! Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!!
Actually, this doesn't surprise me too much. Most of the cash registers that you see in larger chain stores are honestly just pc's. Sometimes they will have some non-standard periphial connections, for example some of the IBM registers (I think the 7390 series) use rj style connectors to connect 99% of the periphials. Some of the older registers are honestly just dumb terminals also. But when you go to walmart, or to Winn-Dixie, you'd be surprised to find out that those registers are commonly an older model pc. Something between a 486 and a Pentium 2.
:)
It is true that some of them use different hardware, I think I've seen some that use PC104 architecture. Essentially the companies manufacturing the cash registers simply want to get the job done cheaply on their end so that they can sell them and make a good profit. There's enough standard pc hardware already out there that it ends up being cheaper for them to use.
The grocery store I worked at in high school had Fujitsu POS's and they were simply 486 66mhz computers. They had all the standard connections and everything, they even ran DOS! We installed Doom on one of them just to say we had done it
[Something witty and intelligent should have appeared here.]
{Traicovn}
Free as in CHER-CHING! Three dollars and seventy nine cents please.
>This is a great hack if you ask me.
As many have pointed out, this is hardly a hack. It's just a PC.
What I'd like to know is why people keep spending so much time getting Linux to run on silly little toys rather than making it better and more accessible on the platforms it already runs on.
Linux is not going to beat Windows by running on my watch, microwave, or cordless drill.
Linux is not going to conquer the desktop by running on my radar detector, VCR, or electric razor.
Yet I bet it will run on one of those devices before it's ready for me to install it on my mother's computer.
-l
We tended to run OS/2 on ours, since back in those days it was a major step up from DOS, better at networking, and could get a way with fewer resources than most Unix systems.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I guess naming something the "Model 40 POS" cash register has different connotations in the cash register and computer industries. ;)
slashdot!=valid HTML
BTW, the reason I have web pages for this at all is that once I realized Linux would run on these then I realized that my mom could possibly move to Linux for her POS OS (which would solve some problems she's been having lately). And so I took pictures so she and my brother could see my progress. I have an automatic thumbnailing script that makes those pages, and I used that. After I repeated myself twice when I was doing things, I made little notes.
But I never claimed it was any great hack, just Linux on a second-hand cash register. I certainly wasn't trying to impress anyone, I'm just having fun...
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
Before I could get the manual, I didn't know how to talk to it. I had no serial port info, so I was trying all sorts of stuff. I looked all over the web and couldn't find much. I wrote an email to the manufacturer and told myself that if I didn't hear back, I'd take it apart. When they sent me the manuals, it was fairly trivial to write a tiny perl script that sent information to it. I have no idea if the VFD commands are similar to the MO commands and I didn't "download any code".
The thing people don't realize is that before I got the screwdriver out, I didn't even know if it was a PC. And in kind of a leap of faith, my mom had bought 10 of them hoping she could use them. So I grabbed one, took it apart, and she's now got them working. But yeah, it is just a PC. And I'm having fun playing with it (Caller ID on the pole display will be cool, and I'm thinking xmms-based VU meters would be nice as well). The only reason there are web pages is because my thumbnailer script makes them. I just added some comments.
Hey, If I install linux on my PC can I get a story on slashdot?? That is exactly what this is.
No, this is me discovering how POSes are built, partly to help my mom out, partly to have fun with old hardware. If it isn't impressive, then that's ok by me. I never claimed it would cause world peace or cure the common cold or anything. I could have cared less it got on Slashdot. In fact, it would have been better if I had got everything working before people saw it... :-)
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.