These things pop up every now and then. The last one I recall now was some car-autorepair-shop in Poland that still used one for some function.
Indiana bakery still using Commodore 64s originally released in 1982 as cash registers — Hilligoss Bakery in Brownsburg sticks to the BASICs
While this may seem questionable— particularly in an era where it seems that nearly all business customers are being pushed to regularly upgrade their PCs— it's actually quite sensible when you consider the processing power required to do Point of Sale transactions, which isn't very much. Even for its age,
It's a very sturdy machine in that regard. You get a large keyboard. There are very few things that can actually break. A lot of them can also break and the machine will still work, just not those things. You could just remove a bunch of chips and still have a working machine -- if you don't [need] sound and a few peripherals. They are not essential in that regard.
Overall, we can't help but appreciate the prudence of Hilligoss Bakery here by not opting for unneeded hardware upgrades when what they have already works. Why create e-waste and spend money you don't have to when your existing retro hardware not only works fine but gives customers something to talk about? Seems like a win-win.
I somehow doubt they do it cause they don't want to create e-waste. That said if they have their own built system running on them they could just start to get "TheC64Mini" as replacement hardware.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by jb on Saturday January 04, @06:41AM (4 children)
If they never needed more than that, why ditch it?
Plus, having the kernal (not a typo: that's the way CBM used to spell it) in ROM (real ROM, not just NVRAM) is a handy security/reliability feature of the c64 that's missing from just about every modern computer.
Cartridge port allows you to put your application software in ROM too if desired (no idea whether the bakery did that or not though), so the only thing to back up is the floppy with your data on it ... and even that can be done while the machine's still running, as there's no write caching and nothing running in the background that might unexpectedly try writing to the production diskette while you've removed it to run your daily backup (on another c64, or even a vic20 would do).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by ShovelOperator1 on Saturday January 04, @05:05PM (2 children)
Why the cartridge?
The cartridge, depending on the software size, would require a printed circuit board, two-sided one, and at least an inverter. The flipflop would be great, so after the software is loaded, the chip will disengage itself to free the RAM it occupies.
C64 in many revisions has two ROM chips. One is the Kernal, the second is the BASIC. If the software they run is written in the machine code, you can literally burn it into EPROM and put it instead of BASIC chip. Machine will run it. Or, what I did in some units, piggyback chips and install a switch.
In the manual, you have a detailed description how the computer works. There is detailed, up to specific signals, description of the PLA, in the internet... which is re-written from one of the article series published in a British computer magazine.
In modern PCs you will get sued if you know any of such details. Welcome to the modern communis^W FREE MARKET world!
(Score: 2) by jb on Sunday January 05, @06:44AM (1 child)
Interesting idea! I never thought of replacing the BASIC ROM.
Yes, I read that manual too ... but so long ago that I've forgotten most of it by now.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ShovelOperator1 on Sunday January 05, @02:29PM
It was even bigger alchemy and I remember some of it :).
The thing is that cartridge can land in many locations in the memory, AFAIR it can even replace ROM BASIC or even Kernal (this was probably done in C64 diagnostic cart). There are two inputs, GAME and EXROM, depending on which the cartridge contents pop in various places in the memory map. It can mask some RAM, it can mask Kernal or Basic.
The thing is, that when it's masked, it's masked and when the cartridge started by e.g. masking the BASIC ROM (Kernal pushed the machine thru initialization, so I/O can be used and interrupts are right), you can run the software from cartridge and not BASIC. When the cartridge masks RAM, it cannot be used too.
So the idea to load a really big software into the cartridge was to make cartridge a bit more active on the side of GAME and EXROM inputs. It was possible, using program launched from cartridge, to drive these lines. The problem is: creators of C64 never though that someone will need to command the cartridge. Addressing and enabling, yes, it's possible, but not commanding. And the cartridge's ROM size may be many times larger than the "window" in the memory space provided by the C64.
The idea then is to use two signals which were previously used as cartridge's chip select signals - IO1 and IO2, to enter the "programming mode", then decoding the bits from address lines to program the excess lines on ROM or to disengage cartridge. This solution required a lot of chips, or a diode matrix, so it was not widely implemented in cartridges.
However, there is anther way: We can "click" the IO1 and IO2 lines by software. So we can add a binary counter to drive additional data lines for cart ROM (switching banks) and even use the last "click" of the counter to disengage the cartridge by putting GAME and EXROM to "there's no cartridge here, go away!" position. This way, the ROM addresses can be extended by 3 or 4 lines. The largest cartridge I made was 128kB (27C010), but there's no limitation to use a wider counter and get more.
The biggest problem in this solution is to port the program to work with such "switched program memory". Generally, you don't do it as clicking the counter back and forth is terribly slow, even for C64. A better thing is just to copy the software to RAM and then turn the cartridge off. Plus you get a BASIC ROM for free:
1. Burn the software to the cartridge ROM with a small control program at start.
2. The control program copies itself to video RAM (because this won't get overwritten nor masked, for aesthetics you can set black-on-black in color RAM)
3. Boot the control program from the video RAM.
4. Copy the contents of the first bank into the specific RAM location. Click the counter. Copy the next one, click, copy, etc...
5. The last click disengages the cartridge, so it's not visible anymore, but the software is in the RAM
6. Jump to the software in RAM.
That's what I remember from building cartridges for C64.
(Score: 2) by corey on Saturday January 04, @11:19PM
Good points. It’s quite deterministic, because the operating software doesn’t change itself. Unlike modern Windows, which decides to update itself, break itself, add notifications and nags at random times which can screw up the POS function.
Cool news hey. But the article from Toms Hardware is really lacking. It’s just a Twitter/X link with no additional photos (other than a stock C64 one), and a brief bit of discussion that I could write in 15 min. Lucky for the guy who posted the tweet because it’s now drawn a lot of clicks.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 04, @01:35PM (5 children)
Lack of network capabilities is a big security boost.
Software that you can review ALL the source code in a reasonable amount of time is also a tremendous security advantage over more modern systems.
Has anyone analyzed the performance potential of a vacuum tube based 6502? An EMP proof system would be interesting, if you needed the waste heat for other things anyway.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday January 05, @07:49PM (4 children)
As someone old enough to remember tubes in radios and TVs (the only electronics in a home then), I can tell you that a tube based C64 would take a large building and be very unreliable; your TV went out every six months or so depending on how much it was used, and they sold replacement tubes at the drug store. Tubes didn't even last as long as light bulbs, which were incandescent then.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Sunday January 05, @08:14PM (3 children)
The tube proposal is part joke, but... If modern capabilities were applied to tube technology, I am certain they could be made at least somewhat smaller, more reliable, longer lasting, self diagnosing of faults, and energy efficient.
Maybe just a room sized 6502 instead of the whole building ;-)
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mcgrew on Monday January 06, @05:09PM (2 children)
Yes, you could do that. It sounds like a C5-A simulator I delivered two air conditioning units to in 1972. Five minutes before I was supposed to be off work they had me take two AC units (each on wheels, the size of an AC on top of a multistory building) halfway across the base.
I was pissed off. What the hell did they want air conditioners for in the damned SNOW?! I got there, and there were two guys standing there like two kids waiting for the birthday party to start. I demanded "What the FUCK do you want air conditioners for in the SNOW?"
"Oh, man, you have to see this!" So I got out of my tractor and followed them inside the computer that powered the simulator. The simulator itself was on hydraulics, and inside it looked exactly like a C5-A cockpit, except the windows were ground glass for a projection screen.
The computer that powered it was several rooms full of bookshelves with printed circuit boards instead of books. Basically a building sized Commodore 64 with transistors on circuit boards rather than ICs. I suspect that the schematic for each board later became an IC, or maybe a whole bookcase was an IC.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Monday January 06, @09:05PM (1 child)
Sweet... can't just open the windows on that baby.
🌻🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @03:38PM
Or on the real aircraft. Unless you're a duck.
One night when I was working the flight there was a C5-A with a broken passenger side windshield, and blood on the tarmac. The plane had hit a duck that broke the window and killed the co-pilot. Yes, it was a murder-suicide.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Barenflimski on Saturday January 04, @02:50PM
If it aint broke, don't fix it. I love they are still using this. Makes sense to me.
The idea that one needs software updates to make things work like they did yesterday is some extremely well done gaslighting by Microsoft and the like over the last 30+ years.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by lush7 on Sunday January 05, @12:40AM
I for one, think something like this is entirely sensible. We often think that because we are in the future, we have better tech and smarter ways about us. Not always true. Sometimes, probably quite often, there is forgotten wisdom of the past.
Imagine a world where we didn't have tribal peoples anymore? If modernity halted to a crash, no one, would remember the old ways of survival, we'd all be screwed. I think this is why evolution tends to branch out like a tree. You have to keep the roots intact.
A good old Commodore 64 from the 80's is chugging along just fine with a few kilobytes of RAM: performing a simple, and essential function of keeping track of numbers.
Everything from cars to toasters is computerized right now. Yet, many of these things don't require arm processors to do what they need to do. They'd be cheaper, easier to maintain, and more repairable if the complexity was cut down.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 05, @12:46AM
Same logic can be used to justify continuing to use a Windows 95/XP PC for your stuff as long as you don't have a network enabled.
FWIW I'm one of those who is against using software that only lasts 18 months where you need to keep wasting lots of resources migrating to the next version/framework/platform (testing, rewrite, documentation, training, etc).
That's like building a chip fab on a foundation that only lasts 18 months, and having to keep moving it.
It's OK to use such disposable grade stuff if your own stuff is going to be that disposable.
Sure it's employment, but at the end of your life, do you want to be like a builder who spent years building skyscrapers that are still standing after decades, or a builder that spent decades mostly moving houses built using bricks and foundations made of shit, that need to be migrated and rebuilt every few months because that shit just doesn't last long enough. Or worse one of those making that cool/hot shit that doesn't last?
(Score: 3, Funny) by mcgrew on Sunday January 05, @07:43PM (6 children)
Come on, the C64 wasn't a piece of shit! I would have loved to have been able to afford one.
Damned kids and their stupid acronyms. Calling a point of sale terminal a "POS" on the internet is so far past laziness it's brain dead stupid. Calling it a POS is as bad as calling a cop a LEO on a nerd site.
Little makes you look more stupid than an undefined acronym.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by damnbunni on Tuesday January 07, @02:17AM (1 child)
Kids? I'm pretty sure POS has been used in the industry for as long as I've been alive, and I'm past fifty. I know the Schlumberger terminal at the gas station I worked at in the '80s was called a POS. (It was also a piece of shit, but that's neither here nor there.)
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @03:53PM
Key words: IN THE INDUSTRY. 99% of the population are NOT in the industry. In an industry newsletter, POS is a point of sale terminal and need not be defined. Anywhere else it means Piece Of Shit, and not realizing that nobody outside your industry knows what your acronym means is brain dead stupid. Wake up!
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Tuesday January 07, @03:24AM (3 children)
I'm not sure if I am missing a joke or whether you haven't read TFS, but POS is certainly easy to work out if you bothered to look more closely. We have to assume a certain level of intelligence when we edit stories.
Thank you. I am 73 and haven't been called a 'damned kid' for quite a few years. I am not even American - but even I understood both meanings of the acronym "POS". Brits more frequently use the terms 'cash register', 'cashier', or 'till' rather than 'Point-of-Sale', and we have a rich selection of terms available for the other common meaning of 'POS'.
If I am missing a joke I will admit to having been whooshed....
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by DECbot on Tuesday January 07, @10:49PM (1 child)
Most modern tills are POS2 terminals. Point-Of-Sale and Piece-Of-Shit.
And for you math nerds, I accept this is likely POS + POS, thus 2POS should be the appropriate designator, but think of the marketing possibilities of POS2!
cats~$ sudo chown -R us /home/base
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @03:59PM
I couldn't figure whether to mod you funny or insightful. The comment was both.
But Humphrey's Market here in Springfield has cash registers (what we not in the industry call your POSes) from when that grocery first opened in 1932. Certainly, those aren't pieces of shit, even though they have no lasers or computer circuitry; all mechanical. And still working well after almost a century.
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Thursday January 09, @04:01PM
Damn, you're a year older than me! I, too, enjoy it when some old geezer (usually younger than me) calls me "young man".
Impeach Donald Saruman and his sidekick Elon Sauron