Can Your ATM Play Beethoven?

bpiltz writes "A funk band in Harrisonburg, VA, called Midnight Spaghetti, has posted a story with photos about a newly installed Diebold Opteva 520 ATM at Carnegie Mellon University that crashed, then rebooted. The Windows XP operating system initialized without the actual ATM software. The result was a public desktop computer, with only a touch screen interface, left wide open for the amusement of the students at the most wired university in the U.S. Interestingly, Diebold is one of the leading manufacturers of e-voting machines."

Comments

I just don't know whether to laugh or cry!

[oiron]

COME ON!!!!!!!!!! Why in the world would someone waste a computer that's capable of running Windows XP (which probably means at least a Pentium with 64 MB RAM?) on an ATM? I mean, the thing is supposed to check your card, pin and then give you a load of cash... Last time I checked, that's a job for something less than an 8080, which could do the job faster, more securely, and cheaper. The right tool for the right job, people! /me rolls eyes

Re:I just don't know whether to laugh or cry!

[eggstasy]

Thing is, its easier to code up a quick ATM script in Flash or something, than it is to design a whole "lean and mean" super customized secure embedded system from scratch, then code up some basic OS and development tools for it, and THEN do the interface in some obscure language with crappy libs.
People are lazy, and costs have to be kept down. What's usually important in a company, is to make their business process "lean and mean", not their software or PCs.

Re:"Progress"?

[zakezuke]

Bottom line is that some one needs to make a new ATM solution that works, propably on an open source platform (is that secure enough, you tell me), and most impotrant is ...IT WORKS....

Platform? One of the nice things about vintage cash machines was the fact that the software was written in assembly. Let's face it, all a bank machine is is just a glorified terminal. It has no need to store information, no need to access disks, mount devices, nor access a network outside of it's banking protocal. There is no need for it to accept new software other then perhaps firmware update from time to time, nor the ability to run background processes. Doesn't need to do cron events or anything above and beyond take card, peform action on account, say thank you.