When I lived in Western New York State, the Quality Markets supermarket chain was using Sweda cash registers with scanning. Depending on the age of the store, there were two versions of these cash registers. The earlier registers had impact printers that were rather loud but seemed to have the entire alphabet at their disposal when printing out the receipt. Newer stores had newer registers running what appeared the be the same software, but with dot-matrix printers handling the printing.
The cashier’s display was a basic guidance panel with numbers and lights, while the customer display was a full alphanumeric display showing the items being scanned. There were “flip cards” on the left side of the register that handled PLUs like produce and such, the “flip cards” triggering a switch the basically acted like a “shift key” so the same key could be used for multiple items. The card had a hand- or typewritten description of the item in question.
I don’t recall seeing the older Sweda systems elsewhere, but Shaw’s Markets in Massachusetts had the newer version with dot-matrix printers into the early 1990s.
I found this photo online of the older Sweda setup. I don’t think it’s a Quality Markets, but the registers are identical. I believe it’s the Sweda 80S system with two back office computers in the back made by Data General.
I was one of the principle designers/software engineers for this system – at Data General – in the early 1970s. Data General had its own system that was installed in all of the BPM and Shaws stores. We had trouble getting other chains to believe DG would stay in this business so we ended up striking a deal with Sweda wherein they acquired our software in exchange for an agreement to buy a required amount of DG equipment.
800/80 system was installed for, I believe, the first department store installation in Western Canada at Woodwards Department Stores. When fully implemented approximately 1,400 terminals and 36 fully Duplexed DG processors were installed all communication to an IBM mainframe in Woodward’s HO in Vancouver BC to track and process ‘charge’ transactions.