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."

They've got these at work...

[hazyshadeofwinter]

The touch screen version [ultimatetechnology.com]. 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...

Its a P233 pc

[BrookHarty]

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.

I like this

[ishark]

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....

What about a calculator?

[fireboy1919]

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...

Re:not surprising...

[tapiwa]

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.

Blah! Try it on a real machine!

[Cef]

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!!

Screen shot

[Salsaman]

Try this page [designboom.com]

What's new about this?

[flc]

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.

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... ..Mozilla!

Here [saunalahti.fi] are some early experiments with the machine (running bitchX).