I found a listing for this Sweda 76 on Craigslist. It’s currently for sale in the Denver area. It’s never been used and was pulled for its original box for these photos.
I know this model and features from identical registers at Ames Department Stores’ service desks before the chain converted to the IBM 3680 Programmable Store System in the early 1980s. I can’t make out all the buttons in the left hand column, but the top two refer to layaways, and the bottom two (in the “4” and “3” row) are for inventory purposes. The features on this Sweda 76, and similar features on the Sweda 46, were used for inventory tracking purposes. The mechanism on the very left is for a punch tape that was removed and sent to a main office for routine scanning into a mainframe. The two inventory buttons are for “double pass” items. The cashier would enter two sets of numbers when ringing up these “double pass” items, usually in softlines. First pass would be an inventory number and the second pass would be the department or class along with the price. At least that’s the way Ames did it.
I suspect the other two buttons are related to refunds and other service desk functions. At the time, Ames handled layaways at the service desk. It would be later in the chain’s history that it would be moved to the back of the store with its own counter.
I stumbled across this video on YouTube from the Hagley Museum and Library channel. It is a very informative video on the IBM 5260 Retail Solution from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
A couple of interesting things about the cash register of this retail solution:
The cashier prompts are actually a “rolling” tape with the appropriate prompt displayed through a window
The keyboard was not conducive to touch-style entry. The chicklet keyboard required a firm touch and the keys were oddly sized
The reason for the chicklet keyboard was the paper overlays used for programming the cash register
Multiple registers could be networked together
Data was stored on 8-inch floppy disks, much like the IBM 3684 from around the same era
I had the opportunity to work on one of these registers for a mall photo shop in the 1991 or 1992. By that time the cash register was pretty beat up but still worked reliably. The new owner of the store needed assistance in learning how the register worked and what his upgrade paths were. Providing this information was a lot of fun for me, though I was learning about the register along the way as well. The majority of my IBM point of sale experience, up to that point, had been writing user exits on the IBM 4680 series of registers as a contract programmer.
So, a fellow Vintage Point of Sale aficionado and I are trying to figure out what Kmart Canada used for their point of sale system in the mid 1980s until Kmart left Canada in 1997. We suspect they were made by NEC.
Take a look in this newspaper photo, the register is spotted from the side in the Computer department.
Things we know:
The cash registers started out with the old Kmart inventory “keys”
The cash registers were upgraded to scanning, however, before the actual scanners were installed, they cashiers entered UPC codes into the registers
There was a two line alphanumeric 13-segment LED display
The registers may have been connected with a 10 Base T BNC cable
If you have any information, please reply to this entry.
This receipt was generated by an IBM 3683 or 3684 register, running a later version of the Programmable Store Solution software Ames started out with in the early 1980s. The cashier entered the SKU and price and the register had the ability to know the sale price of that particular item (but not the selling price of all items).
The purchase was made at store #23 on register one. The lone “1” in the top row indicates this was a CASH-1 sale. Looking at the DOC #, I have never figured out with the “702” represents; the “6” at the end is a checksum digit.
For some reason I remember the tax line being right justified with “SUBTOTAL” and “TOTAL; I wonder if that changed with the later version of software.
From the Zayre Store Appreciation Group on Facebook.
In the beginning days of this site I wrote a fairly brief history about Zayre’s first inventory point of sale control system when we were taking a look at Ames and the purchase and integration efforts of the chain. When Ames purchased Zayre, the company was running NCR 2552 cash registers across the chain, presumably with NCR 726 Minicomputers supporting the efforts on the backend and handling the communications duties with mainframes and the like. Like Hills and Jamesway (among others), Zayre used two-digit department numbers, and added a four digit “style” number for their SKU. Because of the proprietary nature of the NCR solution, a receipt from Hills or Bradlees running the NCR system would have pretty much the same format as a receipt from Zayre. I have found no evidence of Zayre running older NCR 255s or another solution from another manufacturer in any of their stores. All signs point to NCR 2552s. If anyone knows to the contrary, please feel free to comment so I can research further.
Prior to the move to the NCR electronic/computerized system, Zayre was using Sweda Model 46 registers at the checkouts and Model 76 at the service desk. Other chains did the same thing during this era. The Sweda registers provided inventory information by punching an optical tape that would be unloaded and sent to a central office for processing by a mainframe. Zayre used two-digit department numbers and some of their items used a “double-pass” system, where a further inventory control number would be punched into the Sweda register before the department and price were rung up. I don’t know if Zayre used all the keys on the keyboard or just two digit first-pass/style numbers for items, still doing research in the area.
Typical Zayre receipt from a Sweda 46. From the Zayre Stores Appreciation Group on Facebook.
Zayre used department 90 for sales tax. I wonder if this was because it was the upper left-hand key on the keyboard, as Ames did the same thing with their classification three digit class numbers, using 900 as the class for sales tax. After the move to the NCR 2552 registers, when a cashier entered the amount tendered, the register would briefly show the tax amount, for example “90 0.42”, on the display before showing the change or balance due.
Unfortunately, the receipt above doesn’t show any evidence of a “double-pass” item, normally there’d be a notation of CM or something similar in the very left-hand column.
Sweda Model 46 cash registers at a Zayre store. Interesting angle of the register on lane 2, I’ve never run across a Sweda register that looked like that. Courtesy of Zayre Stores Appreciation Group on Facebook.
The Sweda 76 Cash Registers provided more functionality than the Sweda Model 46 registers typically found at the checkouts. At the time, department stores tended to process layaways up front at the service desk, and the Sweda 76 registers were configured to handle layaways and returns. The Sweda 76 also used a double wide receipt tape.
From the Zayre Stores Appreciation Group on Facebook.
On the receipt above you’ll see “CC” on the left hand column of the receipt. I’m not sure if this refers to a double pass item or something else.
From the Zayre Stores Appreciation Group on Facebook.
Here’s a photo of a service desk at Zayre after the conversion to the NCR 2552. The NCR 2552 was a modular cash register. At the checkouts, Zayre typically put the cash drawer under the counter facing the customer, the register on a stand at a 45º angle to the counter and the printers where a full cash register would normally be situated. The checkout counters had little cubby holes for documentation (rain checks, charge slips, etc) placed above the printers for the NCR 2552. When Ames bought the chain and converted the infrastructure to IBM 4680 OS and IBM 4683 registers, the cubby holes were partially blocked by the height of the IBM registers.
Curiously, Zayre did not use NCR as their vendor of choice for their front-end systems for their other chains TJ Maxx or BJ’s Wholesale Club. Embracing EDI or Electronic Data Interchange in the mid 1980s, the front-end systems were just part of an orchestrated, distributed networking system for the chain. The backend was supported by several different vendors including IBM 308x mainframes, NCR systems, and Digital VAX/VMS systems. Zayre began introducing scanning in 1988, shortly before their acquisition by Ames.
I am happy to have found the Zayre Stores Appreciation Group on Facebook, affording me the opportunity to fill in some gaps after browsing through photos and memories from former employees.
Yesterday I noticed in the Waukegan, Illinois Target store the chain has removed the physical keyboards from the NCR point of sale terminals. Watching the cashier work through our transaction, Target has significantly modified the interface of their in-house point of sale software.
I’m just a guy that’s been around technology for a very long time, but forcing keyboard-type input through a touchscreen is not as efficient as actually using a physical keyboard. But alas, I do not make these decisions for Target or any other store chain, for that matter.
The northeastern supermarket chain Hannaford did this years ago with their Wincor-Nixdorf systems. As a software developer focused on efficiency and reducing friction in the user experience, watching a cashier plunk in produce PLUs on a touchscreen always made my skin crawl, as it’s much faster to type 4096 [ENTER] or whatever on a keyboard than stabbing at a 14-inch touch screen.
As I’ve been to several Target stores in the area, it’s interesting to see the chain’s hardware implementation has not been entirely consistent. Some stores have small, Elo touchscreens, while others have larger screens, and others have NCR touchscreens. When you’re writing and maintaining your own software, it’s easy to adjust to differing hardware configurations. This is a good thing, as it’s better to not be locked down to one specific, proprietary configuration.
I’ll be writing more about the history of Target’s point of sale implementations over the next few months. The photos of vintage cash registers and point of sale systems will all have keyboards.
In the early 1980s Kmart came to the realization they needed to upgrade the cash register technology in the stores across the chain. A good majority of the stores in the Kmart chain were still running with NCR Model 5 mechanical cash registers into the 1980s and they were already at their end of life. At the time, Kmart had two separate initiatives in place to develop scanning technology for its stores. One group was working with NCR on their scanning system technology (presumably NCR 255/NCR 2552), another group was developing a system using IBM Series/1 Technology.
IBM Series/1 from the IBM archives sie.
Neither group was having much success and in 1985, Kmart hired David Carlson as the new Vice President of Merchandising Systems. David Carlson had previously worked for Data Terminal Systems.
While neither the NCR nor IBM systems were meeting the Kmart’s expectations, the IBM Series/1 solution was quickly abandoned. The IBM approach had been designed using a new proprietary system called “KIN”, or Kmart Information Network, and placed the vast majority of the transactional processing on the solo Series/1 system, which was overseeing the activities of 25 IBM point of sale terminals. The terminal of choice was the IBM 3683 (originally released in the very late 1970s), and while the 3683 was a very capable point of sale terminal for the time, it’s local processing power was substantially disabled in the KIN environment and the processing was left to the lone Series/1 system at the store. If the IBM Series/1 went down, the point of sale system for the entire store went down. Mr. Carlson deemed this approach unacceptable.
IBM 3683 point of sale terminals at a Kmart in 1985.
Work continued with NCR on the other project, but eventually it was determined that it would take far too much development time (measured in “development years”) to bring a viable solution to fruition. Around this time, it was in the mid 1980s, IBM had released the affordable PC-AT computer platform. The IBM PC-AT solution was based on the new IBM PC platform with additional hardware to support point of sale terminals. It was determined that two IBM AT-based store controllers could provide a redundant solution for a Kmart location. A third party software company in North Carolina, Post Software International or PSI, developed scanning software that would work with the IBM PC AT-based store controllers and run on several different types of point of sale terminals. Kmart wanted to implement their software on IBM 4683s connected to the new PC AT-based store controllers, however, IBM would only sell Kmart 4683s if they ran with IBM’s own software solution (General Sales Application) on the controllers. David Carlson bargained with IBM and was able to get 25 IBM 4683s as a test platform to develop the PSI solution. Working with a third party systems integrator, the PSI system was successfully built, tested, and implemented. It was called PRISM, or Point of sale Retail Information Systems Management. Several types of hardware from different manufacturers could be used at the checkouts. Each hardware type of system had a unique identifier, for example a PRISM system running with IBM 3683s was called PRISM-3, IBM 4683, PRISM-4, etc.
Eventually the Kmart PRISM-x system would make it across the chain of stores. The majority of the PRISM code base worked across all the hardware variations employed by Kmart. It wouldn’t be unheard of to see one Kmart store running IBM 4683s at the checkouts, another running NCR registers, and a third running Fujitsu equipment. While I never saw a mix of point of sale terminals at the same Kmart location, there could be two Kmarts in the same city or town each running their own brand of checkout terminals. (Canadian store chain Zellers would occasionally have a mix on the same network, for example, IBM 4683 on register one, NCR on register two, all running the same software).
Though this photo was not taken at a Kmart, this is one version of NCR POS terminal Kmart used for PRISM. Photo from AP.
Here’s three receipts from different Kmarts in the 1990s all running the PSI software. Because I’m a dork, I can tell you, simply by the print on the receipts, that the first receipt came from an IBM 4683, the second came from an NCR cash register, and the third from a Fujitsu cash register.
All three variations of these registers featured a 2×20 alphanumeric display and relatively the same keyboard layout (some function keys local to the functionality of the terminal were specific to the manufacturer). Fujitsu registers had indicator arrow lights in the margin of the display, IBM 4683s did not. I was in only one store that ran the IBM 3683 registers during this time and I only remember that it was apparent the registers behaved quite differently from any other IBM 3683s I had ever encountered. I was always fascinated with the fact that it was very apparent the same software was running across these differing platforms, as before the standardization of the IBM PC (and clones) platform and their use as store controllers in the back office, each point of sale solution would run proprietary software that had absolutely nothing in common across manufacturer’s platforms.
Fujitsu registers, mid 1990s, unknown Kmart location. Found on Flickr.
When Kmart added the “Super Kmart” format, with groceries and typical Kmart merchandise all in one very large location, the company decided to go with a different IBM-based solution. It looked to be a variation of IBM’s Supermarket Application, but before I speak more to that I need to do further research.
The IBM PC-AT with PSI software, or PRISM system, was used by Kmart well into the early 2000s. A very solid solution, I have used David Carlson’s philosophy in my approaches to software development over the years: “don’t buy products, invest in architecture”.
Kmart 9038 in Monticello, Indiana in 2003. Fujitsu point of sale terminal. Courtesy of Flickr.
Growing up in along Lake Ontario in Central New York in the 1970s, there were a few Kmarts within reasonable driving distance of our small town. My maternal grandmother was a fan of Kmart, and we would often go shopping with her two one of two stores in the Syracuse, New York area. The closest was the Kmart at Northern Lights Circle in Mattydale. The second choice was Kmart in Western Lights Plaza.
In the mid 1970s, when I became of cash registers and their differences, both of these stores had NCR Class 5 mechanical cash registers. The finest and last of the NCR mechanical cash register line, these machines served Kmart well into the 1980s, long after other stores were already converting to electronic cash registers and early computerized point of sale systems.
There was a third Kmart in the Syracuse area, on Route 57 in suburban Liverpool. This store was a little newer than the other two, and they did not have mechanical cash registers, but rather early electronic cash registers by NCR. I believe they were NCR 230s, one of the the company’s earliest entries into the Electronic Cash Register space. The NCR 230 was bulky and the printer was loud, but from what I could discern, did everything the mechanical Class 5 registers did, but little more. I don’t believe there were any communication capabilities back to a central processor of any sort.
All of the registers had a sticker on the front to remind the cashier: TYFSAK! It took me a little while to figure out what that stood for, “Thank You For Shopping At Kmart”.
For years I had thought these early electronic machines were actually NCR 225 or NCR 220s, but I can’t find any evidence of there being such a thing. However, once I found a photo of the NCR 230, it looked very familiar.
Courtesy of the National Archives of Singapore.
After the closure of the W.T. Grants chain of department stores, Kmart took over the space of the Grants store on outer Washington Street in Watertown, New York. We went to this store for the grand opening in 1977 and it had the same NCR 230 cash registers.
The receipts generated by the NCR 230 cash registers look like they came from a mechanical cash register. As mentioned before, the printers on the NCR 230 were quite loud, resembling the noises coming from the older NCR Class 5 mechanical registers.
To the casual eye, this receipt looks like it was generated from a mechanical register, but if you look closely, there’s a quantity included on the last item entry, and quantity management was not possible on the Class 5 mechanical registers.
While the stores I visited were using this mix of NCR mechanical and basic electronic cash registers, other stores in the chain were part of a plan to move forward with the computerized inventory management. At the time, Kmart had very basic inventory identification at the registers. While other chains like Ames, Two Guys, Walmart, etc, were using multiple-digit department and stock number information on their mechanical registers, from what I remember, Kmart had a very basic “Key 1”, “Key 2”, “Key 3” approach. Taking a look at the receipt above, the non-taxable items appear to be rung on “Key 2” and the taxable items appear to be rung on “Key 1”. I’m at a loss for finding a photo with enough detail to scope out a keyboard, but my hazy memory recalls up to “Key 10”.
As time marched into the mid 1980s, the vast majority of Kmarts still used this mix of mechanical and early electronic cash registers. In 1984 I found it ironic that I had purchased a printer for my Commodore VIC-20 at Kmart and the sales slip from Sight and Sound had been imprinted with an NCR Class 5 mechanical cash register.
Kmart did not make exclusive use of NCR equipment during this period. Once I went on to college in 1986, I stopped into the Kmart in Warren, Pennsylvania and noticed they were running Data Terminal Systems Model 440 442 cash registers. These registers had what I would call a “non-standard” keyboard on them, in that the “Key” buttons were on the right side of the number pad, and the tender keys were on the left side, which was opposite of any other DTS Series 400 register I had ever encountered (and I had a very keen interest in DTS registers back then). In addition, while every DTS Series 400 stamped cash tendered as “CA” (for example, 20.00CA would appear on the receipt), the Kmart DTS 440s were stamping “CS”. A subtle difference, but I noticed. Evidently, the Seiko EP-101 printer used for the Kmart machines did not have room for an “A” character.
As I started expanding life’s horizons and visiting other Kmart stores, it became apparent that the chain was not keeping up with the trend of moving into a more cohesive, computerized point of sale (and inventory management) experience. Some stores would have NCR 255 registers without scanning. Another store had an IBM 3683 system with really slow scanning.
From a 1983 Kmart Financial Report, NCR 255 registers. Notice the “TYFSAK” sticker to the left of the receipt printer, but no sign of scanning anywhere.
It would be well into the latter half of the 1980s when Kmart would start bringing their point of sale practices into a computerized management system of the times. Kmart began the process with the hiring of a Vice President of Electronic Merchandising Systems in 1985.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by REED SAXON/AP/REX/Shutterstock (6599574a)
Kupferman Horowitz Lyn Kupferman, right, and her friend Shiela Horowitz wait as a Tower Records clerk rings up the purchase of over $200 in Beatles and John Lennon albums, in Los Angeles
JOHN LENNON SHOT 1980, LOS ANGELES, USA
The cashier above is using a cash register made by Data Terminal Systems of Maynard, Massachusetts. The best I can tell, it’s either a Series 300 or Series 400 cash register. I am looking for any information I can get my hands on for these two series of registers by DTS. If you have any receipts, documentation, photos, anything, it would be most welcome.
There is very little information on the Internet about Data Terminal Systems, even though they were one of the first electronic cash register companies in the world and their technology was everywhere, especially in the 1970s and 1980s.
I’d like to get as much information about Data Terminal Systems online as possible, before it’s all lost to forgotten history.
The next department store chain to be featured here on the Vintage Point of Sale site will be Wal*Mart. Wal*Mart is a fascinating study in vintage electronic point of sale equipment, as they were leaders in going digital with their entire store operation.
In the photo you’ll see a couple of Data Terminal Systems cash registers, presumably Series 400 registers, to be exact. I’m looking for any information on Wal*Mart’s first run with electronic cash registers: documentation, receipts, anything.
If you have anything to share with the site I’ll be sure to give you credit!
