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Keyhut POS: Free Point-of-Sale Software for DOS
- chews 7y agoThank you for posting this. While the software creator might be eccentric, the software works great.
- mehhh 7y agoCore POS is another fun one to check out (it even does credit, debit & EBT) https://www.core-pos.com/ https://www.core-pos.com/
- joshmn 7y agoThere is something much more charming and interesting about KeyPOS. Not that one is better than the other, or more up-to-date, but... KeyPOS is written in QBASIC, looks like it's from the 90s (it is), and the author is self-deprecating but not so much that it's annoying. ... plus it's not making you install a web server and isn't an Electron app. I thought we all collectively hated Electron. > CORE is primarily a web-based, PHP+MySQL application. There are a few C# pieces most of which are Mono-compatible. > This is an ElectronJS based app that turns CORE's lane into a desktop app. Apache, MySQL, etc are all still required. This app just takes the place of the web browser. Why?
- edoceo 7y agoI'll guess for them, cause I do it for our POS but it's necessary to be "on the box" to control serial ports and print w/o prompt. Think scanners and receipt printers.
- icebraining 7y agoYeah. The POS system I worked on used a small local web server for the browser to control the drawer and such, but it's a more complex setup than getting the webapp itself to do that. If one is okay with a web POS, Electron itself seems like a good fit.
- mehhh 7y agoKeyPOS has quite a bit of charm, and I wish it were more extensible (eg: free software) like Core POS. The Electron app part is new, I know they were using Firefox with a few XUL extensions in 2015. There probably wasn't much choice beyond Electron once XUL was killed, and their PHP codebase is one of the nicest I have ever worked on.
- Mathnerd314 7y agoPHP codebase, worse site than this one. Front page gives an error about a Google Maps API key. I don't know why they have a website at all rather than just redirecting to the GitHub pages.
- cmroanirgo 7y agoLove the guy's almost anti tech stance. From his fb page: >I am apparently no longer fit to live on this planet. Over the last month or so I have received some disturbing emails. When summarized they say that they love the POS software. It does everything they want and more, they could not be more pleased with it and if it was not free they would have been more than happy to pay for it. However they are going to have to dump it and go find a different POS program that will probably not be as perfect for them as DHPOS and will have to pay for it to boot. The problem is that their younger employees hate it. Either they cannot figure out how to use it because it requires input from the keyboard or they are appalled because when they swipe the screen nothing happens. Cry me a river. Apparently smartphone use makes one useless for any other function which is yet another reason to avoid them like the plague that they are. I am increasingly distressed that this page has become an endless rant about smartphones but it does seem as though they have become ubiquitous with the only exception to my knowledge being my pants. In the last month my only co-conspiracy relative has gone over to the dark side and I am now alone. Over the last week I built a cart to hold folding tables (photo below) for the 6 Corners Association that did not in any way require the use of a smartphone, no swiping required, no cat videos attached, and my attention was focused on reality as evidenced by the fact that I still have possession of all of my fingers. Plus I had buckets of fun to boot. I am quite proud of it and since it is real I have no worries of someone accidentally deleting it or of it being hacked and remotely being sent to scoot down Milwaukee Avenue as a hazard to the populace. I find real life to be endlessly fascinating, plus if I leave my flip phone at home or the battery dies or the phone gets crushed by a plummeting cement block, I’m good, not a problem. I know where I am (since I never left reality) and I can get anywhere I need to go since I pretty much know where everything I might need is. If I need to contact someone I have a printed list of phone numbers in my wallet. However when I am with someone else and their smartphone dies the look of panic on their face is alarming. I try to console them. So please do not even think of holding a tag-day to purchase a smartphone for me because I am more than fine without one and it would only make me wonder why you hate me. https://facebook.com/daleharrispos/photos/a.408929929488156/846538985727246/?type=3&source=54&ref=page_internal https://facebook.com/daleharrispos/photos/a.408929929488156/...
- Meph504 7y ago
- joshmn 7y agoThis is incredibly charming and almost makes me want to start a lemonade stand or something.
- okcwarrior 7y ago"Error #2 was that there are people all over the earth who are writing tax laws, they do not talk to each other, and they are all INSANE." He has a very valid point here!
- cygned 7y agoOne could say the software looks dated, but you would be surprised how many of such applications are still in use today. I see those a lot at furniture shops and large stores. I bought a Mercedes-Benz last week and the dealer’s computer was logged into an IBM mainframe running z/OS and COBOL/JPL. I find it interesting to spot those types of systems in commodity situations.
- skrebbel 7y agoLots of such "dated" software can be used much more productively than modern GUI or web based software. Most oldschool DOS-y business software is very keyboard driven, so the learning curve is much steeper than that of your average web app. But once you're there, and really it's just a few hours of learning to hit the right keys while your experienced colleague is training you up, then it's super fast. There's no web page loading times. Click ... Wait .... Click ... Etc ... Inputs are properly tab indexed, because that's the only way to navigate between them. Every keyboard hit has instant feedback No time wasted mousing around. Look, mouse/touch driven UIs are great for discoverability, and web based UIs are great for deliverability, but neither of those are super important when all users of the software are expected to use it a lot, and use it from a known amount of places (eg branches of a retail chain). Of course there's nothing preventing web based UIs from supporting the same speed and productivity, but I know of few examples that actually do this. I love web based software and I make it for a living, but I wish UX designers for line of business applications would take a few more hints from the nineties. If you can assume that a new user gets a few hours of on-the-job training from a colleague, then that wildly changes the assumptions underlying your UX design.
- johannes1234321 7y agoNot only is the response fast, but also don't you have to look at the keys or for some entries even the screen. https://youtu.be/oOjnpOyUzS0 https://youtu.be/oOjnpOyUzS0 For a while I always said, that I preferred a counter for getting tickets (train or something) as the trained clerk is faster on the keyboard than me on the touchscreen of a ticket machine. Nowadays however clerks on counters have to push the mouse more and more and seemingly have less training.
- copperx 7y agoCan this run on a Raspberry Pi via DOS emulation?
- thorum 7y agoYou could probably get this running in a browser via emulation with one of those JavaScript DOS clones. From there, you could wrap it in an Electron window and write some nodejs glue code to let it interface with hardware and the file system. That would make it possible to rig up some kind of cloud storage for the database files and maybe start to think about getting it running on phones with React Native. You could sell the iOS app for a small price like $20, or a subscription model with in app purchases. That would help to fund a redesign of the website to a more modern single page app approach.
- Vogtinator 7y agoI'm not sure whether this comment is sarcastic or not, which is sad.
- VMG 7y agoPeople writing comments on Adderall makes this even more difficult
- slovenlyrobot 7y agoPretty certain parent commenter is fully aware of what they're doing. :) It's a masterpiece (at least, I hope they're fully aware!)
- jmspring 7y agoNot everything should be wrapped in electron :)
- ecthiender 7y agoMaybe the commenter was just being sarcastic. But I agree it's hard to tell.
- _pmf_ 7y agoElectron is not the hero we deserve, ...
- 7y ago
- KindOne 7y agoIf you use the software you can email him and ask for his Capterra review link. Capterra is giving out $10 USD gift cards for reviews on his software.
- ritty 7y agoI love the website. Just last weekend I made a reader for my company's forum with absolutely no CSS. It's just plain text and a total of 38 lines of code written by me, which includes db connection parameters. Some people I showed it to wanted it to be the real forum. It was fast as hell and mobile and tty (lynx) friendly but didn't allow any sort of login, posting, or posts read tracking, so not really usable. Fun though. I love super basic things. Another really basic site I use is called Hacker News. Heard of it? :)
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- AlexDragusin 7y agoI encourage people as much as I can to consider doing sites to use as little resources as needed. Shameless plug, I recently put up the Leanternet directory of lean internet sites, you might like to see more of these kind of sites and the Leanternet principles at https://www.leanternet.com https://www.leanternet.com
- dickeytk 7y agoThe second button, “read the leanternet principles” is broken badly into 2 lines on my iphone
- AlexDragusin 7y agoThanks for pointing it out, will get it fixed shortly. EDIT: Fixed.
- Crinus 7y agoI like the idea in principle, though in practice i noticed that there are a bunch of similar lists and all of them tend to have only 6-7 sites (half of them being the same). I think there needs to be a more automated way of finding and sharing these sites, perhaps some browser extension?
- 7y ago
- isoprophlex 7y agoIs this the templeOS version of a POS system?! I love it.
- onesmallcoin 7y agoI think mental diversity in the workplace is something to be encouraged not ostracized. Personally I find both Terry and Dale to be great, well informed reads despite a bit of what someone else labeled self depreciating behaviour.
- icebraining 7y agoI'd say it's just a typical 90s software project that kept going until today.
- KindOne 7y agoDiscussion on reddit (3 months ago): https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/byuw77/so_this_is_a_thing_in_production_its_like_a_blast/ https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/byuw77/so_this_is...
- mike_d 7y agoThe photos of it in use in stores are adorable and must be heartwarming for the developer http://keyhut.com/posphoto.htm http://keyhut.com/posphoto.htm
- gattilorenz 7y agoThe one in Indonesia is not only using a CRT, but they have one of those "protectors" on. Blast from the past, I never understood what they were supposed to do in practice.
- geowwy 7y agoI think they help with glare.
- ztjio 7y agoAnti-glare
- tyingq 7y agoThat one appears anti-glare, but there are also privacy oriented ones that prevent reading the screen from the side.
- gattilorenz 7y agoBut weren't there also ones with a "grounding cable" that was supposed to help with "radiation"? I'm sure it was quackery, but I seem to remember those as well.
- jandeboevrie 7y agoAfter the reddit explosion I emailed the guy and donated $5. He personally replied, seems to be a cool lad. So if you can spare some cash, you'll make him very happy.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- l3git 7y agoat prodigy.net? Loving it.
- cies 7y agoI cannot find the source code, or a license. It's "free" (gratis) software, but is it FreeSoftware?
- scandox 7y ago> SOURCE CODE > Sorry, but I do not release the source code for any of my software. This is particularly true for the Cash Register program. > The Cash Register program. has many things that must be hidden like the passwords and PIN numbers. It also has things that users must not be able to change like sales and tax amounts and transaction numbers. These things could easily be changed by anyone who has the source code and anyone with the source code could write a program that would change the hidden things and then release it on the internet making my program useless. It's all in FAQ. I don't really get the whole thing about the PINs/Passwords, but I'm guessing there's some logic in it. The funny thing is he explicitly explains to people how to modify the binary with a Hex Editor to change language strings...
- cies 7y agoThanks for the digging. I would steer clear of this project. I expect there to be opensource alternatives that score better on openess.
- simmons 7y agoI'm a bit of a computer history buff, and dig around through old software archives from time to time. It seems to me that developers back in the 80's (at least in the PC / home computer world) were quite possessive of their source code, even for hobbyist projects that they gave away for free. It might seem a little odd to us today, although perhaps they had some rational motivation (e.g. hopes of productizing it or selling the IP later). So I'm not surprised that this program is also closed source, with some vague integrity/security reasons offered. I say this with all due respect to the developer, who of course is free to distribute his software however he would like. It's a very cool project, and I often wish we could see a resurgence of such simplicity and distraction-free UX. :)
- 7y ago
- gattilorenz 7y agoUgh, talk about feature creep and planned obsolescence. From version 7.0c you need a 200 MB or larger drive for autobackup and Win95+ or later for mailing/FTPing autoreports. Now I need to replace my perfectly functional 386DX-40 with one of those fancy 486. Hopefully a Cyrix CX-486DRX2 will do and I can avoid the expense of a new motherboard... :^)
- tssva 7y agoThere is not necessarily a need to upgrade your hardware. Minimum CPU requirement for Windows 95 is a 386DX.
- Zardoz84 7y agoa 386 at 40 MHz run Windows 95 perfectly
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y agoI'm actually surprised at that; I know FTP was around in that era, and SMTP is a simple as throwing a simple text format over TCP.
- jeroenhd 7y agoProbably Winsock-related. Sockets required third party support in DOS and required an extension program on Win3.1x, but Win95 standardised them in the OS API. So, if you as a programmer want to do sockets programming without obscure old software that probably lacks documentation, Windows 95 is the way to go. You can read about the history of winsock here: https://tangentsoft.net/wskfaq/articles/history.html https://tangentsoft.net/wskfaq/articles/history.html
- chungus_khan 7y agoDefinitely. Networking on DOS was an absolute nightmare for so many reasons.
- vectorEQ 7y agothis brings back memories :') love it. thanks for sharing.
- kensai 7y agoThe site of this software looks like it is up since early 1990s... :D
- skissane 7y agoOur six year old is having fun playing with this app right now. Setting up a pretend shop.
- Topgamer7 7y agoIf you want to introduce them to more DOS stuff. When I was young my daycare had a DOS computer with Space Quest III and Where in the world is carmen san diego. You can probably get freeware versions of those.
- skissane 7y agoI’ll try those. He loves Commander Keen. He has dozens of Keen mods installed in DOSBox. He even tries building his own with a level editor (Abiathar)
- b0bj4ckz0n 7y agoHow did your six year old find this software?
- skissane 7y agoI had to install it for him and show him what to do. (I was just kind of guessing what to do.) His shop sold all kind of random things - everything from hamburgers to nuclear weapons... Some of the screens, e.g. the stock table maintenance, the controls are a bit hairy (e.g. you have to press control-arrow keys to move to another set of fields), he got a bit frustrated at that when I wasn’t there to help him. (I had to go help his little sister.)
- severak_cz 7y agoKeyhut POS author replied on his FB page: > If you have a photo of your son setting up the program that you would like to post on my photo page I am more than willing in this instance suspend the rule of those photos being of actual stores because such a photo would be unbelievably cute and I am a sucker for that. However will understand if you do not wish to post a photo of your son that all the weird-ass folks from Hacker News can see. Also, you can always change columns in the stock table just by pressing [ENTER].
- vortico 7y agoAlong the same lines as a program running on lightweight DOS, is it possible (or common) to build a Linux "distribution" for the sake of running a single TTY program? How fast would it boot, and how reliable would it be? (To avoid being called into work because a brief power outage "bricked" the POS.) Linux would have the advantage of working on modern PCs with modern hardware like touch screens, USB scanners/printers, etc. Or, say I want to boot directly into a video game console emulator with Linux with 0 additional steps. How would I do that?
- Crinus 7y agoWhen Linux finishes initializing itself it runs /sbin/init (it is one path it tries among a bunch of others, though i think /sbin/init is the first it attempts to run - you can override that with the init= kernel parameter at boot time, e.g. in GRUB). So just make /sbin/init be your binary and make sure it can run by itself without any other initialization and it should work.
- etatoby 7y agoIn fact, init=/bin/bash is the traditional way to gain root into a system for which you have forgotten the password. Assuming the filesystem is not encrypted.
- pjc50 7y agoWhile you can just make it launch a program instead of /sbin/init, you may be surprised at the results, because it won't mount any of your filesystems, setup the network, etc. So you want systemd/sysvinit (according to taste) to run first, which will take the normal amount of time to boot. The cleaner way of doing this is through "inittab". Normally this starts a program called "getty" on the console which provides the login prompt etc. That's what you want to override. It will also restart your program every time it quits. (Less normal options include "put your program in the initrd", which is viable if it's very small and does all the setup itself, or "write something that runs directly from the UEFI loader")
- juliangoldsmith 7y ago
- bluedino 7y agoOne of my first jobs in IT was replacing POS terminals at a large sporting goods chain. Netware server, DOS terminals, DOS drive mappings and networking fun stuff and it was in the days of Windows 2000 so a lot of the MSCE's didn't know anything about DOS drivers etc. Or they, were smart enough to pretend that they didn't so they didn't get stuck with this assignment.
- nobleach 7y agoOh man, Netware in the era of Windows 2000!! I had a few of these hold outs. Many of my clients were on WinNT 3.5 with a Netware 3.1 server. Getting the windows admins to understand loading NLMs and using the different console tools was "fun". I only got to toy with one Netware 4.11. And that was just using NwAdmin95 (so the joys of learning NDS). I had it set up in my home lab too as I was planning on getting my CCNA... then I moved to a Windows only place and worked on getting them to adopt Linux.
- bluedino 7y agoYea, we had 'team red' (novell) vs 'team blue' (MS) I was team Linux. So team black was they ended up naming it.
- nobleach 7y agoI love it! I managed to get one client to do a "drop in" Netware replacement using some wire compatible netware replacement (I can't even remember the name) Their machines still kept the Netware login and everything. Good old days.
- devlim 7y agoi thought it's an open source project
- ASalazarMX 7y agoThe FAQ clearly states it's closed source: http://keyhut.com/faq.htm#source http://keyhut.com/faq.htm#source "Sorry, but I do not release the source code for any of my software. This is particularly true for the Cash Register program. The Cash Register program. has many things that must be hidden like the passwords and PIN numbers. It also has things that users must not be able to change like sales and tax amounts and transaction numbers. These things could easily be changed by anyone who has the source code and anyone with the source code could write a program that would change the hidden things and then release it on the internet making my program useless".
- WoodenChair 7y agoThis is really cool to come across, but you're not getting the whole experience if you don't read the author's "Why" page: http://keyhut.com/why.htm http://keyhut.com/why.htm
- glancast 7y agolove it, also the chat link at the bottom: http://keyhut.com/chat.htm http://keyhut.com/chat.htm
- lucaswhitee 7y agoGreat stuff, will looking forward to <a href="https://www.eposdirect.co.uk/uk_en/epos-software" https://www.eposdirect.co.uk/uk_en/epos-software" Title="epos software"> epos software </a> some more postings....
- kup0 7y agoAs I've grown older (mid 30s now), I've noticed over time that I have begun to strongly prefer lightweight, minimal, focused, efficient things in all sorts of areas of life, including software. For a while I was in the "lol can't believe this business still uses a DOS program!" camp... but that knee-jerk reaction has faded and I'm completely on the other end now. I'm not anti new technologies, but I am skeptical that they are ultimately always better than what preceded them. There is so much we have that is "new" that feels far worse than what we had before. Smart TVs, bloated/slow software, etc. The design side of my brain still feels like even just a few lines of CSS could probably spruce up the site for this software (just in terms of colors/font), but even then, is it really necessary? He likes it the way it is, why not just keep it that way.