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!
I didn’t step foot into a Jamesway until 1980. I was 11 years old at the time as I believe it was spring 1980. It was grand opening week of the Jameway store in Oswego, New York.
Prior to this grand opening week I had known this location, and another store on Arsenal Street in Watertown, N.Y. as “Welcome to the Wonderful World of Westons”, as the sign proclaimed as you walked into Westons Department Store.
Westons was a regional chain in Upstate New York that went bankrupt and was sold to Jamesway in late 1979.
August 1979.
I remember both the Oswego and Watertown Westons stores having Sweda cash registers with inventory recording capabilities, using the punch tape method found at other department store chains such as Ames and Zayre. After my hometown’s Ames opened I paid closer attention to the Sweda registers at Westons, they worked the same way except they used two-digit department numbers instead of the three-digit class numbers used at Ames. I don’t remember if Westons had the “double-pass” numbering of certain items, where the cashier entered a merchandise number without an amount and then followed with the department number and the amount of the item being purchased. I do, however, remember that some of the Sweda registers at Westons were “Power Penny” machines, where the cents row of amount keys could all trigger the motor, whereas others were not and the cashier had to hit the big black motor bar after hitting the department and amount keys.
When Jamesway opened up in the Westons locations in both Oswego and Watertown, they used the same registers Westons had left behind. This was easily discerned by the fact that the receipts had a blob of ink where the Westons store branding had once appeared and you could vaguely make out the word “Westons”, as if the logo stamp had been covered over with tape.
Original Jameway stores opened up in the 1970s used NCR Class 5 cash registers at the checkouts. The last mechanical cash registers made by NCR, they were also the most sophisticated. Like the Sweda registers used at the former Westons stores, the NCR Class 5 registers punched an optical tape to be read by IBM mainframes located elsewhere. Here’s a Jamesway receipt from an NCR Class 5 register.
Jamesway used two digit department numbers and it wasn’t long before the stores were converted to the IBM 3680 Programmable Store System. I have been racking my brain trying to remember if Ames switched first and Jamesway followed or vice-versa. I’m inclined to think that Jamesway made the move to IBM 3683/3684 registers, but they used the lower model keyboard. There were fewer buttons on the keyboard and the “0” key was to the left of the numeric keypad instead of under the 1-2-3 row. The slash key was located above the zero key, adjacent to the 7-8-9 row.
After the move to the IBM system, Jamesway’s receipts showed a two digit number, followed by a slash mark, followed by the SKU, and then the amount. I intently watched a cashier input this information during a sale, trying to determine if they used the slash key for this input and they did not. There was a department and a separate SKU key to the right of the numeric keypad. The best I can tell, the version of the IBM software they were using was almost identical to the earlier IBM 3650 Retail Store System which ran on older IBM 3651 registers.
From the IBM 3650 Retail Store System manual.
Having never been in a non-Westons Jameway before the opening of these locations in Upstate New York, I have no way of knowing if Jamesway may have been running the older IBM systems in their legacy stores.
When I was in college in 1986 I visited the relocated Jamesway store #1 in Lakewood, New York. Jamesway #1 had originally been further out Fairmount Avenue before relocation. Situated in the former JCPenney space in the Chautauqua Mall, this new location too ran the IBM 3683 registers I had seen replace the Sweda registers in Oswego and Watertown. Like those stores, that incarnation of Jamesway #1 was running with the lower model keyboard on the 3683s. I can not find a receipt from this implementation anywhere on the Internet.
About 10 years ago I found some photos from a Jamesway store that were taken in the late 1970s. The store featured in the photo series was using NCR Class 5 mechanical registers with department number keys, just as Ames did when they took over Big N in the late 1970s. I am still trying to locate those photos.
In the late 1980s Jamesway moved to the IBM 4683/4684 registers, however, it appears they did not use the IBM 4680 Retail Application software, but instead went with a system from PSI in Raleigh, North Carolina. The use of PSI software is a theory; I determined this by the format of the receipt issued from the IBM 4683, it bears no resemblance to a receipt from IBM 4680 Retail Application, not even with heavy modification.
The receipt’s formatting is identical to receipts from other chains that used PSI’s software on Fujitsu cash registers. PSI was later purchased by Fujitsu.
With the implementation of the IBM 4683/4684 registers up front, Jamesway introduced scanning to their stores, hence the UPC code on the receipt. Having done some contract programming on IBM 4680 systems and having actually used the software during some holiday cashier duties for other chains, when I watched a cashier at Jamesway work through a transaction on an IBM 4683 at a store in Oneida, New York I knew there was no way they were using IBM’s Retail Application.
Jamesway declared bankruptcy and closed up shop in 1995. I missed the opportunity to purchase one or two of the registers from their liquidation sales. I have fond memories of the chain and always had a pleasant experience in their stores.
In 1997 or so, Ames decided it was time to move to the next stage of their point of sale technology implementation. By this time the IBM 3680 hardware, running the AWare/4680 modifications, had been in the legacy Ames stores for well over a decade, and the IBM 4680 hardware in the former Zayre stores were nearly a decade old as well. With murmurs of Y2K on the horizon, Ames moved forward and decided to upgrade their point of sale equipment with a unified approach, tying their front end systems in with their back-end systems.
Ames decided not to continue with IBM’s General Sales Application and instead went with Cornell-Mayo Associates of New Jersey and their OPUS Store System package.
Working with Cornell-Mayo, Ames installed Siemens-Nixdorf hardware for their point of sale systems. The cool thing about CMA’s OPUS Store System Package was that it could run on pretty much any hardware configuration at the time. If the terminal had enough horsepower it would run with a graphical interface. An older terminal could have its life extended and would run OPUS in a text-only interface. The approaches to the system used the same keystrokes, commands, and workflow, so an operator would feel comfortable in front of either type of terminal. CMA’s OPUS Store System also ran on any architecture, meaning it could run from a Windows NT terminal server or it could run on Unix or Linux.
When Ames made the switchover from AWare/4680 to the OPUS Store System I lived near a former Zayre store in New Hartford, New York. Unlike the day back in the early 1980s when I saw the folks removing the old Sweda cash registers and replacing them with IBM 3683 terminals, I did not get to see any of the switch over at this store in New Hartford. I did know folks that worked at the store, and in our brief conversations about the store (and my interest and history I had with Ames and its point of sale systems), they mentioned they really liked the upgrade of the point of sale systems and they were happy they could scan in the receipt number instead of punching all those numbers in while working at the service desk.
It’s the little things that make our jobs easier, right?
With the move to the CMA system, Ames was now printing the UPC code along with the item description on their receipt. Functions were controlled through “S” keys on the keyboard (S1, S2, S3, etc), which would map to functions as dictated by the user interface, depending on where we were at any given point of a transaction. The thermal printers printed the receipts quickly and the Ames logo was back loud and proud at the top of every receipt!
Ah, but what about the eight-digit SKUs that had endured for so many years with the IBM systems? They made their way to the backend database, and if an item didn’t scan for whatever reason and the UPC wasn’t to be found in a manually keyed in lookup, the cashier could enter the eight digits and the press the SKU button, which was located right where it was on the old IBM systems, to the right side of the keyboard adjacent to the “789” row and the function key row above it.
Curious about these new systems, I sent email to the Ames MIS department back in Rocky Hill, Connecticut and had a really nice email exchange with the team responsible for installing and maintaining this new point of sale system. Markdowns and sales were easier to maintain, the system used standard hardware, and all aspects of the store’s business was connected and communicating with each other and with the home office.
Ames was ahead of the Y2K curve.
A quick side note, the IBM 3683 terminals in the legacy Ames stores probably would have struggled with the year 2000. Another retail chain was still using IBM 3683s well into 2001. Receipts from after the Y2K scare were dated 1972 to compensate.
In late 1998 Ames purchased the Hills Department Stores chain. At the time Hills was operating 155 stores, all on the IBM 4680 OS system running General Sales Application, or some customized variant of it. The acquisition resulted in duplicate Ames stores in some towns. Where I went to college in the mid 1980s there a legacy Ames store, an acquired Zayre store that also became Ames, and then eventually the legacy Ames store was shut down, however, there was a Hills across from the Zayre-turned-Ames, and one of them had to go. I believe it was the former Zayre that was closed down.
There were no Hills in the Mohawk Valley of Upstate New York, but there was a Hills near my hometown. This Hills was in the now long gone Penn Can Mall and it was converted to an Ames. The company handled this transition differently in that they shut the Hills down completely and quickly remodeled the store with a new green-and-black scheme, and then opened up as Ames with a grand opening celebration.
Like the day when Ames #80 opened up in the late 1970s, I attended the grand opening of this new Ames at Penn Can Mall, and was surprised to see not Siemens-Nixdorf registers at the check stands but rather IBM SurePOS terminals. Thinking Ames had gone the “Zayre conversion route” again with their point of sale systems, I was happy to see that Ames had done it the right way, and while this converted Hills may have been running IBM SurePOS registers, it was still running the Cornell-Mayo Associates OPUS Store System. The entire chain was still in communication harmony. I asked Ames’ MIS Department about this over email, and that’s when I learned about the openness of the CMA software and that it could run on just about on any hardware. Siemens-Nixdorf was undergoing some changes (they would become Wincor Nixdorf) and IBM won the bid with their SurePOS systems. And I confirmed there still was a “SKU” button on the new systems at the former Hills. And on a quirky note, the location of the monitor and printer on the IBM systems was swapped with the configuration on the Siemens-Nixdorf systems. I have no idea why this was the case.
Other chains in the U.S. were running the same CMA software package as Ames, and you could tell this by the presence of the “S” function keys and the format of the receipt. Most notably in my experience was Barnes and Noble, who ran the same software on NCR terminals of the time. As of a few years ago, Cornell-Mayo Associates was purchased by a company called Retalix, who in turn was purchased by NCR. I believe OPUS Store System became OPUS Millennium Store System and today is called OmniPOS. The newest iteration is available for just about any operating system, including mobile devices such as iPhones, iPads, and Android hardware.
It would be a couple of years later when Ames would announce their declaration of bankruptcy and their intention to end the chain after 44 years of doing business. I remember when I heard the news being rather disheartened, as Ames had been a part of my life in some way since I was in my single digits, and my eccentric interest in computers, which in turn became a very successful software development and engineering career, was fueled by the growth of technology with Ames’ point of sale systems.
While scouring the Internet for information I found a couple of receipts posted online from Ames’ final days and I was happy to see some familiar numbers printed on the slips.
A stationary purchase, class 661, padded with five sevens.
Even in the final days of “Bargains By The Bagful”, Ames was still using the eight digit SKU numbers from days of yore.
A typical Ames SKU, class 895 (which I don’t know off the top of my head) and a five digit inventory number beginning with a “3”.
I have to wonder if Ames still had any candy bars in stock in those final days, if the cashier would have entered 67235515 on the Siemens-Nixdorf or IBM SurePOS terminal running the Cornell-Mayo Associates software.
