The Retail Solutions Providers Association (RSPA) is celebrating the 75th anniversary this year and at their recent RetailNOW gathering, featured an exhibit of technology in the point of sale space over the years.
In addition to the vintage equipment on display (shown in previous blog entry photos), they’ve also put together an impressive library of vintage brochures and other documentation from over the years. With their permission, I’ll be sharing some of these pieces here on the site.
For more information on the RSPA, check out their website at https://gorspa.org.
Up first, sales brochures around the DTS Series 400 line of cash registers. There’s several different models and use cases shown in these brochures.
Some features available in the Series 400 included Interregister Communications, ANS-R-TRAN (allowing for host computers and the cash registers to communicate data back and forth), change dispensing interfaces compatible with NCR change dispensers, dot matrix remote slip printers, real time clock, and multiple cash drawer options.
I’m still on the lookout for operating, programming, and technical manuals for all of these machines. I’m also looking for old receipts generated from these machines as well.
DTS-Series-400 DTS-400B-We-understand-the-World-of-Food-Service-and-Hospitality DTS-Model-400B-for-restaurants DTS-Series-440 DTS-440-Series-we-understand-productivity-begins-at-the-checkout
Pizza Hut Canada used the DTS systems. Servers took your order at the table, and when you were ready for the “check/cheque” they tallied up everything on the DTS system, and the DTS system printed all your orders on the slip printer. The information was saved, then you would go to the counter, the system would remember your order, and then you pay. You would get a guest copy of the servers’ check with the DTS printout, and also the receipt from the DTS with your transaction payment.
The first hotel where I worked as a Night Auditor back in the ’80s had a DTS 400 series behind the front desk that we used for the hotel and we had two series 400 pre-check machines in our restaurant. I don’t remember much about these machines, but for some reason what is sticking out in my head was the sequence to initiate X or Z reports…. CLEAR, SUBTOTAL (1 time if X, 2 times if Z), REPORT #, LINE FEED.
PayLess Drug had these registers well into the 1980s, until they went to scanning and new registers which simply said “JB622” on the front but had no manufacturer’s name on the front, and I always wondered if those were a one-off designed specifically for PayLess, as I never saw the JB622 registers anywhere else. I have always wondered who made those. They have been gone since the mid-1990s when Rite Aid acquired PayLess.
If those are the same ones I’m thinking of, RevCo Drugs also had them. They were large white terminals and they had the NCR Shuttle-pin printers also. I think they were actually bought out by CVS.
I do remember visiting Revco in Ohio with my parents in the early 1980s. At that time they had IBM 3683s, as did Mr. Wiggs stores in the same shopping centers.