Windows XP point-of-sale machine gets nasty sniffle. Luckily there's a pharmacy nearby Fancy sticking a toe into the warm bath of nostalgia? UK retailer Boots is showing the old Windows XP login screen on a self-service terminal in its Islington store. Spotted by Reg reader Reuben Heller, the point-of-sale (POS) terminal cheerfully displays the old XP login page, although staff have placed an upended basket in …
So would I, but you'll be lucky. WINE is unfortunately rather game focused, so if you want a business app to work your best bet is to pay someone to support the APIs.
I tried using it to support a (quite old) remote control app a while ago, and the authentication APIs it required were stubs, so no go.
Technically? Yes
In all likelihood the POS software is Windows-only due to relying on hardware drivers for scanners, cash registers, EFTPOS-type devices where said vendors haven't considered non-Windows variants yet.
In all likelihood, said hardware vendors have yet to consider post-embedded WinXP releases yet so anything is possible.
Probably. They would likely have to upgrade the peripheral hardware, rewrite the software, ensure it can run with just 1GB of RAM, check that it's performing as expected, that it's as reliable as what is currently being used, and is fast enough to do everything it has to, but, other than that, I can't see any reason why not.
>And don't forget to ensure there is an SLA in place to keep the current version of the OS fed with security updates for at least 1020 years.
It's not difficult, it was normal operating practice in one tech company I worked in during the early 80's - It meant you soon learnt good practise software engineering principles. When I later joined the mainstream computer industry people thought I was a little daft working in the way I did...
"ensure it can run with just 1GB of RAM"
That is unlikely to be a challenge. The minimums system requirements for XP was 1.5GB *of hard disk*. RAM was 64MB with 128MB recommended. Now obviously, that was only enough if you didn't want to do anything challenging - like moving a mouse cursor - but even so, I would be rather surprised if an XP-based POS system was using more than 1GB RAM.
But if you are a POS sales kit provider, you fork the kernel and necessary parts of the tool chain software away from the main line distro, and then employ an in-house support team to do it yourself. Hey, you can even strip it down to it's bare minimum so it runs on lower spec. hardware and to have a reduced attack surface.
Provided you resource it well enough, you can keep it running and in *your* support for as long as you want, regardless of what the main-line distro does.
In case you haven't twigged, this is the primary difference between using Open and Closed source software. And if you are not re-distributing the software, merely putting it on your own hardware that you support, you don't even have to make the source of your changes available (although there would probably be no real point in not making it available).
So long as everything was made to be PCI compliant and the hardware requirements were doable then fine.
A few years ago the NCR tills at Tesco used to have a fault in the software. If you were in the middle of your scanning and pressed "Request Subtotal" the machine would crash and restart itself. I worked out what was causing it and told the friendly staff at my local store. The duty manager asked me to prove this to her satisfaction which I did to her amazement. She then tried it herself and the same thing happened causing much writing of notes. She then scanned all my shopping and overrode the price down for everything to a penny. She paid that herself and thanked me for my bringing it to their attention. I joked that I should have put some bottles of booze in the trolley before alerting her.
I was browsing NewEgg.com to drool over hardware I can't afford & one of the filters available was for Windows XP. I thought "WTF? That can't be right!" & applied the filter.
I couldn't believe my ears when my screen reader confirmed that they were indeed selling machines with Windows XP on them.
*Head explodes in disbelief*
"I doubt anyone wants to hear that, nor use it (for that matter)"
Not since Microsoft's last "froggy in hot water" maneuver, anyway...
Why not? If it works for a given purpose there's no need for "new and shiny". As far as POS machines, given what's happening with Win10 updates, no business will want their equipment going down for updates (during business hours) and possibly not coming back up.
If you're using the UWF on Win 10 (and if it's an embedded device you bloody well ought to be!) then this has actually gotten substantially easier than it was in the XPe days.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/customize/enterprise/service-uwf-protected-devices
tl;dr automatic updates don't happen on UWF enabled Win 10 devices, and must be specifically requested at a time of the administrator's choosing.
Machine image may or may not be hard (depends if the drivers for your old hardware are actually available).
Next step is of course deploying that image. Depending on age, security and networking policies I wouldn't be surprised if (for at least some places) that involves taking a usb stick and plugging it into each individual device one by one in every single store all over the country. Logistically challenging at the very least.
I know there are still companies selling WinXP based products that have current licenses and current support from Microsoft. At the end of 2018, there are still large organizations that keep paying for XP support. The only thing that is clearly out of support is the home and small company issues.
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I have, let's see: 8 functional PC's. This one we're on now is XP SP3. I have a BSOD about three-times a year. No more and that's when I overload it, in 32-bit with only 3Gb mem allowance, of course. My 'event viewer' has only 2 error msgs from a printer server & a non-connected ODN (StarTrek for) Fibre-Channel. Never been hacked by SpeCtre or etc. And I have this PC on 364 days, upto 12hrs/day -¹
You get to this point, by making all possible mistakes and never repeating them, and a fact that at age 47 I studied for a Bsc in Software-Development lends nothing to me other than a keen instinct.
I have 64-bit SuSe Linux too of course to run on the 8Gb of memory but that's a horse of a different colour.
I have an old Lenovo 'book size' computer with an Atom that came with XP on it, from around 2006. I hooked it up to a 3D printer (dedicated to it now), though it took some coaxing to get all of the drivers installed and working.
I'm still running XP64, I bought a second hand Dell Optiplex last week and transferred the HDD out of my previous Dell machine when the sound card packed up. My mate "upgraded" to Win10 last year and thoroughly regrets it. He can't get drivers for some of his old hardware, such as scanner, printer, etc., so he has to keep his old XP32 laptop running on his network as an interface/print server until he can afford to dispose of the legacy equipment and replace it with new shiny shiny.
Hey 3D printer guy:
Do you also happen to have an AOA110, or EEE 701? I have some netbooks here if you can make use of the parts incl displays (3)
Original idea was to mod them for AI inference but they are woefully underpowered. The only machine I own that is remotely powerful enough
is a full sized laptop which can be fitted with a 2.6 GHz Phenom 2 for about £33, it has had an earlier S1G4 chip.
Alas limited to 8GB RAM which may barely be enough.
A Core 2 Duo just won't cut it.
Just asking out of morbid curiosity.
Fire up a machine with a virtual XP, run the stuff, if it crashes, just reboot the virtual machine. Would it work?
It's not like XP makes a whole world of difference between running on bare metal and in virtual form, but... shenanigans being shenanigans...
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