back to article Heathrow airport and stock exchange throw mystery BSODs

It's no surprise that public transport delivers up a huge number of BSODs, since transport needs to disseminate lots of information. So let's open this week's BSOD Watch with not one, but three BSODs readers spotted at London's aviation paradise, Heathrow Airport. Paul sent us a pair from 2012. Nice composition in the first, …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Blue Screen ...

    ... sung to the music of "Blue Moon" with the lyrics slighty adapted.

  2. Dan 55 Silver badge

    En route from CAI to NCL

    This is the error display of a Acorn Archimedes. Not as clumsy or random as a Windows PC. An elegant operating system for a more civilized age...

    1. rob_leady

      Re: En route from CAI to NCL

      Not necessarily an Acorn Archimedes.

      Could easily be RISC OS running on a Raspberry Pi.

      1. VinceH

        Re: En route from CAI to NCL

        "Not necessarily an Acorn Archimedes.

        Could easily be RISC OS running on a Raspberry Pi."

        That's not a Pi - if it was the Pi build of RISC OS, the switcher icon (the acorn icon at the far right end of the icon bar) would be a raspberry. It's also not an Archimedes, because to the left of the acorn it shows a monitor icon rather than a palette icon. It's probably a RiscPC or A7000/A7000+ - I'd guess one of the latter because the drive icon in the (far left of the icon bar) is labelled VB7000.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: En route from CAI to NCL

        Probably not a Pi, judging by that Acorn icon style, this looks like a RISC OS 3.7 era. Most likely 3.71 on an A7000

    2. Martin an gof Silver badge

      Re: En route from CAI to NCL

      When I worked at Magna in Rotherham (I started about six weeks after it opened and everything broke on the opening day), most of the machines were Win ME (IIRC), but we did have a single Acorn RiscPC doing an image recognition task - it used a video image and looked for strips of reflective tape on hard hats worn by visitors, counting them.

      The thing just kept on working. Never stopped. Apart from having "a fiddle" (as you do) I never had to undertake any maintenance on this machine in my 20-odd months working at the place.

      That part of Magna was flooded a little while after I left and I know that this part of the place - in the basement - had to be completely refurbished. I wonder if the Acorn is still in use?

      M.

    3. breakfast Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: En route from CAI to NCL

      Using a computer like that in your transport system, they knew the RISCs they were taking.

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: En route from CAI to NCL

      Hokey operating systems and ancient architectures are no match for a good Excel spreadsheet at your side, kid!

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: En route from CAI to NCL

        Ok, who's the scruffy nerf herder that downvoted that one?

  3. A Non e-mouse Silver badge
    Unhappy

    I feel it's a bit unfair to be posting BSOD pictures back from 2011. Shouldn't there be some kind of time limit on how old the BSOD picture can be?

  4. Anonymous South African Coward Bronze badge

    Bonus points for OS/2's screen of death...

  5. M7S
    Coat

    Those Acorn screens

    would they be antiques?

    Just the wife's please. Yes, the Overall

  6. Richard Lloyd

    Ancient coin counter

    Using the ancient coin counter in the big HSBC in Liverpool has been fun for me in the recent past. Ignoring the fact you have to type your account number and sorting code manually (no card swipe!) complete with stars displayed for numbers so you have no idea whose account you're paying into, I had a spectacular crash with it (way better than a BSOD).

    While I was tipping in my coins, the screen started showing virus-like red steaky vertical lines until I actually couldn't read the text on the screen at all. Luckily, it had finished counting my coins before I called over an HSBC assistant who promptly knocked on the wall behind the machine and 5 seconds later the machine rebooted!

    I thought that was some clever reset switch embedded in the wall until the assistant opened the door next to it and it turns out someone had rebooted it behind the scenes - obviously such a common problem that knocking on the wall was a good enough signal :-) Oh, it booted into Windows XP (didn't say Embedded - does the logo include that?) and that was only last year...

    1. Richard 12 Silver badge

      Re: Ancient coin counter

      Yes, the default XPE boot logo includes the word Embedded.

      Like almost everything else, it can be changed but rarely is.

    2. Gareth79

      Re: Ancient coin counter

      Glad it's not just me who was boggled at how the coin machine needs the customer to type in the account details but the notes machine has a card reader! Still it's better than most other banks which have no way to pay in coins other than going to a cashier (and possibly needing to bag them up).

  7. TRT Silver badge

    That's not a BSOD

    That's the angry fruit salad of death.

  8. fpx
    Facepalm

    Unhelpful?

    How about a new category for unhelpful public displays?

    My favorite (not) is the local underground. Each track has displays showing the number of minutes until the arrival of a certain line, e.g., "next U3 in 5 minutes." So far, so good. Until there is a disturbance.

    Then, the displays are replaced by full-screen messages like "delays due to <insert BOFH excuse>, we apologize for the inconvenience" or even "the blockade has been resolved, but we experience continued departures from schedule." When all you want to know is whether you still have enough time to grab a coffee before your train comes.

  9. FuzzyWuzzys
    Facepalm

    Default PC for Theatre Ticket Booth, Leicester Sq

    I was walking through Leicester Sq the other morning, the big advertising screen in the ticket booth had a McAfee screen up on the display, "Your subscription has expired and this system is no longer protected. Please click on the button to renew on our website.", just around the edge of the screen were desktop icons for eBay, Symantec and loads of other cack default installations you get when you buy a pre-built PC from someone like Dell or HP, so they're obviously not custome made, just off the shelf PCs which means they're probably a doddle to hack and put up your own stuff on their screen once you're in!

  10. John Styles

    My favourite was on a minibus from Birmingham Airport to an off-airport car park. The PC existed to show two images and alternate between them (one saying 'don't forget to give the driver your keys' and one showing their logo) - perhaps they could have printed out 2 A3 sheets and laminated them? However everytime the minibus went over any sort of bump the PC rebooted itself so you got the BIOS boot sequence, then (I think) Windows, then booted into some VB app to show the two things.

  11. Novex

    There has to be a prize if someone can catch an MS-DOS screen of death, shirley?

    And as for feature requests, how about BSODs being in the language of the computer OS regional settings?

  12. Gis Bun

    Win XP embedded support died in January. Many equate it with the consumer edition.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Re. dinosaurs

    Ages ago I saw (in use!) core memory at a bank over here.

    I am still (20 years later!) bound by an NDA but can mention that it was in active use and is kept around because the software will only run on that one machine and can't be easily copied.

    I also noticed that quite a lot of businesses STILL use Windows XP, for $Deity's sake upgrade people!

    Can't be too judgemental because maintain an XP SP3 system as the lady it belongs to can't understand anything else and it also runs Office 97 nicely (P4 2.2G 2GB RAM 80+160GB IDE HDD)

    Its not even a VM, the dinosauroid it is attached to still has its original power supply and only recently got a new fan/network card after a badly timed lightning bolt took these out.

    1. Stuart Castle Silver badge

      Re: Re. dinosaurs

      "Can't be too judgemental because maintain an XP SP3 system as the lady it belongs to can't understand anything else and it also runs Office 97 nicely (P4 2.2G 2GB RAM 80+160GB IDE HDD)"

      The problem is that there is a lot of old infrastructure like that in place. When the business relies on it, it can be difficult to justify replacing critical infrastructure when the old stuff is working.

      I've never worked for a bank, but in the 90s, I had an interview for a systems maintenance job at the Bank of America headquarters in the UK. The job? Designing and maintaining a windows based UI for their existing applications and systems that were apparently mostly written in COBOL, and written decades earlier.

      I can actually see the logic. When your business relies on a system for it's survival (as banks do), if that system works it is extremely tempting to leave it be.

  14. Mark 133

    A tidy desktop...

    I was passing through Gatwick airport last week, and noticed the screens that show how to use the biometric passport machines were all also showing a cheeky Windows taskbar, with the ubiquitous "There are unused icons on your desktop" pop-up.

    I was tempted to take a photo, but figured doing so while passing through customs in possession of a beard may be frowned upon by people with sub-machine guns.

  15. allthecoolshortnamesweretaken

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