I often do searches online for various legacy point of sale systems, including the NCR 255 and IBM 3680 systems. I stumbled across this narrative from computer.rip, which echoes a lot of my feelings of where we’re going with point of sale equipment today (toward unsuitable iPad and similar equipment). Computers are trending toward an “one size fits all” paradigm, when that’s always not the most efficient approach.
I found this an interesting read. I hope you do as well.
@jpnearl Hat tip to @jbcrawford.
@jpnearl Thanks! Your website has been really useful to me in understanding some of these older systems. I hope to write more about them!
I love your website because it features all the pos registers that cashed me out when I was a little boy. I so miss the old registers–they had buttons, beeped and actually had style. Now, most of them are just an iPad with a printer–no style, no character or anything. I bet nobody will ever make a website featuring them when they’re finally “vintage”.
Long-time lurker here, also interested in the point-of-sale gear I remember from my childhood in southern Ontario, Canada. There are several registers/systems from back then (’80s and ’90s) that are almost impossible to find online today… some of them include models from NSC/Datachecker, IBM, NCR, Sweda, and even SASI, which had at least a few installations in my neck of the woods.