Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-27:/2442641] "Researchers develop a camera that can focus on different distances at once"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-22:/2441759] "Anna’s Archive Backed Up Spotify, Plans to Release 300TB Music Archive"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-22:/2441687] "UNIX v4 tape successfully recovered"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-20:/2441389] "Big GPUs don't need big PCs"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-18:/2440782] "The D.N.C. Is Scrapping Its Report on What Went Wrong in 2024"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-17:/2440388] "Coursera to combine with Udemy"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-16:/2440168] "Reporter suggests Half-Life 3 will be a Steam Machine launch title"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-16:/2440076] "Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-16:/2440093] "Sega Channel: VGHF Recovers over 100 Sega Channel ROMs (and More)"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-15:/2439885] "Problems with D-Bus on the Linux desktop"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-13:/2439285] "Rethinking sudo with object capabilities"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-12-03:/2436801] "After nearly 30 years, Crucial will stop selling RAM to consumers"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-11-29:/2435726] "Leak confirms OpenAI is preparing ads on ChatGPT for public roll out"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-11-23:/2434090] "GCC SC approves inclusion of Algol 68 Front End"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-11-04:/2429023] "Reproduced and Recovered: the First Chinese Keyboard-based MingKwai Typewriter"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-29:/2427478] "New physical attacks are quickly diluting secure enclave defenses from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-26:/2426753] "The Apple Network Server Mac OS ROMs have resurfaced"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-28:/2427141] "Front-Panel Booting an ATmega88 Microcontroller"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-15:/2423906] "Thousands of customers imperiled after nation-state ransacks F5’s network"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-10:/2422560] "Bringing Desktop Linux GUIs to Android: The Next Step in Graphical App Support"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-09:/2422303] "Show HN: I've built a tiny hand-held keyboard"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-09:/2422102] "Discord says 70k users may have had their government IDs leaked in breach"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-09:/2422107] "OpenAI, Nvidia fuel $1T AI market with web of circular deals"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-08:/2421957] "Ask Hackaday: Why is TTL 5 Volts?"
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Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-08:/2421811] "Synology reverses policy banning third-party HDDs"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-07:/2421665] "Qualcomm gobbles up Arduino"
Diag| Considering item [tag:pappp.net,2025-10-07:/2421660] "Denmark Aims To Ban Social Media For Children Under 15, PM Says"
{"id":98,"date":"2009-12-28T15:11:44","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T20:11:44","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2011-02-02T00:14:45","modified_gmt":"2011-02-02T05:14:45","slug":"pos-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/?p=98","title":{"rendered":"PoS Toy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I scored a (at least mostly) working Point of Sale terminal from the trash at the nearby location of a fast-food sandwich chain named for a mode of mass transit. It’s a pretty nifty little piece of hardware, a Micros Eclipse 400498, based on a 1Ghz Pentium 3, 512Mb of RAM, and normal (ish) PC-BIOS. It has a broken WinXP install on it now, I think it shipped with an older NT version, because the drivers are all fucked up. The fun part is the attached goodies: a 3-track magnetic stripe reader (credit cards, etc.), 2-line VFD display, and a 12” touchscreen (only 800×600, but pretty crisp and good colors). <\/p>\n

I’m thinking it will make a bitchin’ jukebox. Scroll the track information on the VFD, put a touch-flow-esque interface on the touchscreen, hook up some speakers, etc. One of the housemates suggested a barmonkey (it could even process payments), but that is a WAY more involved project because of the valve rigs, and I have plenty of unfinished involved projects right now.<\/p>\n

It is however being obstinate about drivers and alternative boot devices, and the manufacturer (micros) seems to believe that not providing any drivers\/manuals\/support of any kind will enforce support plans\/upgrades\/create security by obscurity or something, because their website is supremely unforthcoming. There don’t appear to be any WinXP compatible drivers for the various hardware, so the best choice is probably to try for Linux. Its not wanting to boot off USB devices (despite the BIOS’ claims that it will), doesn’t seem to like having a 2-channel ATA cable attached, has no CD drive, and has repeatedly failed on the wubi-install-from-USB trick, so it will be exciting to get going. Maybe some sort of netboot stunt.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I scored a (at least mostly) working Point of Sale terminal from the trash at the nearby location of a fast-food sandwich chain named for a mode of mass transit. It’s a pretty nifty little piece of hardware, a Micros … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,8,1,12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-98","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computers","category-diy","category-general","category-oldblog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=98"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=98"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=98"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pappp.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=98"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}