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Amiga News and Community Announcements => Amiga News and Community Announcements => Miscellaneous => Topic started by: peroxidechicken on August 21, 2003, 12:08:04 AM
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As reported in the the Inquirer (http://theinquirer.net/), Windows based ATMs have been crashing - here's (http://theinquirer.net/?article=11130) a picture.
Maybe this one way that MS helps people save their money???
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Scares the crap out of me just knowing that some ATM's actually run that crap.
It reminds me of some article I read about a particular bank in Canada, which had full keyboards(or fuller keyboards) on their ATM's, and apparently there was a way to 'surf the web' under Windows 3.x
Perhaps some Canadians can help me with details here.
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I've seen similar screens at the McDonalds drive thru
on more than one occasion
could explain why the orders are frequently wrong
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Windows money management . . . . :roflmao:
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Oh, come on. That looks like a database error, and has nothing to do with Windows.
Now, I remember the time I saw a BSOD at the train station. That was funny. :)
PS - Don't most ATM's still use OS/2?
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Practically all ATMs in Sweden run Windows NT, and I see this kind of thing quite often. The most common error message is "Windows is running low on virtual memory".
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really looks like a database error, but i´m not sure if i really want windows to handle MY money ...
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I have seen several windows problems with the atm system in use by Swebank (FöreningsSparbanken). Mainly the run out of virtual memory(wich render the machine useless), but also total system failures. Crap i tell ya.
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Yeah ..
Well lets hope that nuclear power stations arn't running this crap !!
Makes you wonder what systems are controlling the launching of icbm's don't it !! :-o
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easy fix: Increase the pagemem if it runs low on virtual mem
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easy fix: Increase the pagemem if it runs low on virtual mem
Proper fix: work out what is causing the machine to run low on memory in the first place. Fix that problem instead.
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In the UK, at least HSBC, Natwest and Lloyds use Windows. I have seen crashed ATMs on maybe 4 or 5 occasions, each time with either a blue screen or windows requester.
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Oh, come on. That looks like a database error, and has nothing to do with Windows.
Is interesting that it coincided with MSBlast, though. Perhaps the machine on the *other end* was taken out?
Guess y'never know. Unless/until someone spills the beans on RISKS, anyway.
Now, I remember the time I saw a BSOD at the train station. That was funny. :)
PS - Don't most ATM's still use OS/2?
As far as I can tell, there was a mass exodus off OS/2 for ATMs around the Y2k time. Probably not for any planned reason, but between IBM's EOLing, Y2k concerns, and the relative ease of reimaging what are, after all, just embedded PCs, a lot of things started turning up Windows during that time. It was a bit eerie to watch it disappear from recently-erected POS systems (the sort with the giant truecolor LCDs that you might see at any recently-renovated supermarket, that leave the titlebar and widgets visible for easy identifcation by peons like me)... I can only imagine whoever wrote the cash-register software probably EOLed the OS/2 version when IBM declared it dead, licensed, and supported for only another decade. Though as far as I can remember, those were usually seen with Warp 3 widgets, not 4 or later, so it wasn't like they were keeping current anyway.
Now, what the good ol' monochrome/textmode ATMs run is anyone's guess. (Or rather, there seems to be enough variation in those that I've never heard a conclusive 'answer.') Sure haven't seen *those* crash much, though I did fear for my card a few weeks back when one was slow to respond...
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Poster: The_Editor Date: 2003/8/21 4:06:54
Yeah ..
Well lets hope that nuclear power stations arn't running this crap !!
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767 (http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767)
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/333505 (http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/333505)
I'm sorry, were you saying something?
Makes you wonder what systems are controlling the launching of icbm's don't it !!
G4 Macs and Playstation 2s!
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Quote:
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easy fix: Increase the pagemem if it runs low on virtual mem
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Proper fix: work out what is causing the machine to run low on memory in the first place. Fix that problem instead
Waste of time fix: reinstall
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I'm pretty sure most banks use or used OS/2
I remember the bank I'm with used OS/2 years ago, that was before they merged with another one, and then started using MS-Windows machines running as terminal emulators! :crazy:
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Xeron:
In the UK, at least HSBC, Natwest and Lloyds use Windows. I have seen crashed ATMs on maybe 4 or 5 occasions, each time with either a blue screen or windows requester.
Aye, on one occasion at a natwest machine I saw the NT4 post shutdown message "its now safe to switch off your computer", which was nice :-)
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Poster: iamaboringperson Date: 2003/8/21 7:44:43
I'm pretty sure most banks use or used OS/2
I remember the bank I'm with used OS/2 years ago, that was before they merged with another one, and then started using MS-Windows machines running as terminal emulators!
Yeah, it used to be incredibly popular in the financial sector, and *someone* is keeping the eComStation guys afloat. Still, it's been at least 3 years since the hearse left the building (for those mad scientists' lab), and IBM's own marketroids are pushing NT/XP derivatives on the one hand and Linux on the other, so it's done a good disappearing act in the places it'd be visible, at least for me. (After all, the only reason it was *there* in front of the teller was because someone had a contract with IBM, and it came with a VT3270 emulator! ;-))
I used it, I loved it in spite of its warts, it's sad to see it go... but for backend servers, *NIX is better suited anyway, and nobody gives a crap about the desktop XPerience these days. A Linux distro standardized around one GUI toolkit (or RedHat's bizarre unification effort) really isn't much different from a user's perspective. (Remember how much fun it was to add and remove protocols? Or to try and use the frontend(s) for configuration of network services? Or to finally get it speaking SMB only to realize IBM and MS disagreed on 'machine name' vs. 'ID' fields?)
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Is interesting that it coincided with MSBlast, though. Perhaps the machine on the *other end* was taken out?
Probably not. They are much to paranoid to ever connect such systems to the internet. I read an article about the ATM system here in Sweden and they use dedicated, isolated lines between the ATMs and the central servers using the X25 protocol, so the MSBlast worm wouldn't work there.
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@The_Editor
Well lets hope that nuclear power stations arn't running this crap !!
The "critical systems" (like nuclear power stations, life support systems etc. ) don't run ordinary hardware and software...
If you remember the installation note on OS3.5 and later, a warning on something like "not to be used on airports, nuclear power stations etc..." I firstly though that was a joke, but is a standard disclaimer.
________
TOYS VIDS (http://www.fucktube.com/categories/41/toys/videos/1)
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OK!!! :-o
Now, I demand a list of ALL the ATMs out there that are Windows-based! I don't want Bill Gates to touch my money!!!
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I have seen one at a local tesco,s supermarket that had crashed. :-)