🚀 go-pugleaf

Gen...@swcp.com (Gene Gajewski) wrote:
>This can't be right - OS/2 running an ATM? Heck - I'd shoot the manager 
>that made that product decision. What an utter frickin waste! Does not 
>anyone know how to right a clean concise embedded system? An ATM is a 
>fairly stupid machine with a limited function...

ALL of the "automatic ticket tellers" (Guichet Automatique) for the
trains in France are hosted by small 386-PCs running OS/2 1.something.

ALL of the ticket agents run "QuickRail," a user-friendly interface
to the reservations system, under OS/2 1.x.

The ticket agent screens are highly optimized (via user testing)
text-mode interfaces designed to make it possible for a trained
agent to sell tickets as quickly as possible.  The ATMs have
highly-graphical, touch-screen interfaces, for selling tickets by
cash or credit card.  There's one in just about every rail station
in France.  You make your reservations over the phone (or by Minitel),
go to any one of these machines, plug in your credit card and Pfttt!
out come your tickets (reservations and all) for a TGV trip to, say,
Lille or Lyon.  They work pretty well.  Having used them (as a 
consumer, not a tester) I can say that I find them extremely
convienent, and generally a lot less impatient than the agents.

You /do/ occasionally see the "protection fault" screen (where it
dumps the registers to the display) but it's extremely rare.
Response time is usually pretty good, but is bound by the
comms to the reservations system, not by the ATMs.

About the only major decision to make around here is when
to port to 32-bit OS/2, which is going to happen eventually.
We considered Windows, Windows-95, and NT, and about the only
contender for the title of "best future platform" is NT, though
there's no compelling reason to change at the moment.

Windows and Windows 95 were deemed (correctly, in my opinion)
to be basically too transient to invest in.  We're pretty
confident that OS/2 in its current form will be supported by
IBM for it's "true blue" customers for the indefinite future.

And, if all you're interested in is a 32-bit, protected-mode,
security-less OS, it /is/ a better OS than W95 or Windows, and
it runs in a /lot/ less memory than NT.  C'est la vie!

LEB
(SNCF Pricing and Yield Management Group, Paris, France)
--
Larry Baker
(lar...@sdt.com)