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points by chasil 5 days ago | 0 comments

I think their cash registers ran SCO Xenix. I ran the free version on my desktop at work for a few months in the late 90s (I think that I still have the installation media).

They had the same virtual console behavior as we see in Linux.

I had a friend who worked in one of the stores, and I scared the daylights out of him by hitting Ctrl-Alt-F4 on his cash register to get a login. After switching back to F1, he learned the scary trick himself. I have no idea why all of the gettys were enabled in /etc/inittab.

Edit: I had no idea about Pier 1 (rest in peace), the 1959 proxy battle for the family takeover, Tandy's sale of Pier 1 in 1966, Tandy's purchase of a controlling interest in the failing Radio Shack for $300k, Tandy's abrasive management style, or his early demise at 60 from a heart attack.

Peir 1 folded just as we entered the COVID pandemic.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pier_1_Imports

[–] EvanAnderson 5 days ago

> I think their cash registers ran SCO Xenix.

Tandy had a Xenix license from Microsoft and shipped a version on their TRS-80 Model 16 and Tandy 6000 machines (both of which were Motorola 68000-based). It would be interesting to know how much of their own stuff they used internally. I have a recollection of a (potentially apocryphal) story the TRS-80 Model 1 had a "fallback" use as an in-store management computer if they failed to sell.

[–] chasil 5 days ago

Free OpenServer appeared in 1996. The cash registers were running on the x86 platform, for sure (68000 was a dead architecture for general purpose computing by then - Apple had been on POWER for several years).

https://www.eetimes.com/sco-provides-free-unix-system-licens...

[–] EvanAnderson 5 days ago

I'm talking more like the late 80s when I was giving my address info to clerks at Rat Shack who were typing it into some kind of green-screen app on what, if memory serves, kinda looked like a Wyse terminal.

[–] chasil 5 days ago

That could very well have been a Model 16 running Xenix 68k.

From memory, the two serial ports could run classic getty processes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRS-80_Model_II#model16

[–] EvanAnderson 5 days ago

Yep-- that's what I was getting at. I'd love it if somebody w/ real Tandy corporate experience appeared in this thread and discussed it... >smile<

Here's hoping for the power of Hacker News.

[–] chasil 4 days ago

Agreed, that would make the conversation quite lively.

Unfortunately, anyone who managed or worked on a curses app that relayed store sales data to a corporate database would need an exceptional memory in their retirement.