4 ms·

Most of the machines in service were older and running OS/2 which was an awesome system. Some major banks (BoA, Chase, WellsFargo, etc.) ran newer machines tha

by jboggan 13y ago

Most of the machines in service were older and running OS/2 which was an awesome system. Some major banks (BoA, Chase, WellsFargo, etc.) ran newer machines that had fancier features like check image recognition. Those meant a move to newer OSes but that was a limited case. The actual reason OS/2 is gone and all these ATMS are running Windows is because of companies like NCR and Diebold lobbying the government to put new language in the Americans with Disabilities Act [1]. It required every ATM to be capable of text-to-speech translation which the older hardware and OS/2 systems were not capable of (most of the machines I was pulling had 133Mhz processors and less than 64MB of RAM). This meant 1) new hardware sales, 2) new software sales, and 3) selling custom ad campaigns to run on the shiny new color screens and new hardware. The industry had been stagnant for awhile in hardware and software sales, the deadline of March 15, 2012 was a great shot in the arm for NCR and Diebold. Lest you think this really was about helping people with disabilities, the vast majority of ATMs that I 'upgraded' were drive-through units sitting on concrete pallets in bank parking lots too high or too inconveniently placed for anyone to use unless they were driving in a car. I did get some very positive feedback from the blind and their friends(who knew the IRS employs so many blind folk?) when I installed some of the walk-up units, but the large majority were drive-throughs. [1] - http://www.americanbanker.com/magazine/121_10/atm-accessibility-ada-compliance-1042410-1.html http://www.americanbanker.com/magazine/121_10/atm-accessibil...

TheCraiggers 13y ago
Thank you for eliminating the last remnants of hope I had for our system of government. I know lots of people say that nothing is done without a monetary reason, but I still held out hope that at least some legislation was created with entirely benevolent reasons. Bah.
- nebulasri 13y ago
  Welcome to my world :) I thought in the US, things might work differently though, but it seems just like "the grass is greener on the other side"
nebulasri 13y ago
Sorry for the curiosity, by "I 'upgraded'", did you mean you were working for NCR/Diebold, or the banks to go upgrade the ATMs?
- jboggan 13y ago
  The NCR/Diebold techs charge out at 200-300 an hour which regional banks cannot really afford. I was working for a 3rd party servicing company which existed only because of the duopoly's insanely high service rates. We were contracted by the banks to purchase the appropriate amounts of licensed software and then install it on their machines. One way NCR/Diebold would screw customers is by having the software upgrade process take so effing long. If you wanted to upgrade the software on one of these machines it was multiple CDs with a total boot / reboot / loading time of 5 to 6 hours. I've torn through all the code and programs I could find on those machines while in the shop, there is NOTHING that could possibly be taking that long to load and install. The entire customer interface is an XML config file with a few PNGs and text-to-speech running for selected parts of the XML. (This is also a fun way to hack an ATM to say things like "FEED ME A STRAY CAT"). We really suspected the companies greatly padded the install time to increase their service bills. We got the contracts to upgrade from the regional banks because we would instead build new cages with the correct CPU/RAM/audio spec, preload the software with a bunch of cloned hard drives, swap the cages and then bring the machine back on the network. This was MUCH cheaper than paying the factory technicians. Don't even get me started on what NCR/Diebold do with the DMCA. They would do things like releasing an identical hardware component (receipt printer, etc.) but with a new driver, and if anyone bought a used component (for about 10% of the new price) and dared to update the driver so it would work with newer machines (which refused to work with the old drivers) they would sue and win.
mzs 13y ago
It's a bit sad that TTS could not be enabled on 133MHz machines with 64MB of RAM, but that's just how it is now-a-days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth

by jboggan 13y ago

TheCraiggers 13y ago

Thank you for eliminating the last remnants of hope I had for our system of government. I know lots of people say that nothing is done without a monetary reason, but I still held out hope that at least some legislation was created with entirely benevolent reasons. Bah.

nebulasri 13y ago
Welcome to my world :) I thought in the US, things might work differently though, but it seems just like "the grass is greener on the other side"

nebulasri 13y ago

Sorry for the curiosity, by "I 'upgraded'", did you mean you were working for NCR/Diebold, or the banks to go upgrade the ATMs?

jboggan 13y ago
The NCR/Diebold techs charge out at 200-300 an hour which regional banks cannot really afford. I was working for a 3rd party servicing company which existed only because of the duopoly's insanely high service rates. We were contracted by the banks to purchase the appropriate amounts of licensed software and then install it on their machines. One way NCR/Diebold would screw customers is by having the software upgrade process take so effing long. If you wanted to upgrade the software on one of these machines it was multiple CDs with a total boot / reboot / loading time of 5 to 6 hours. I've torn through all the code and programs I could find on those machines while in the shop, there is NOTHING that could possibly be taking that long to load and install. The entire customer interface is an XML config file with a few PNGs and text-to-speech running for selected parts of the XML. (This is also a fun way to hack an ATM to say things like "FEED ME A STRAY CAT"). We really suspected the companies greatly padded the install time to increase their service bills. We got the contracts to upgrade from the regional banks because we would instead build new cages with the correct CPU/RAM/audio spec, preload the software with a bunch of cloned hard drives, swap the cages and then bring the machine back on the network. This was MUCH cheaper than paying the factory technicians. Don't even get me started on what NCR/Diebold do with the DMCA. They would do things like releasing an identical hardware component (receipt printer, etc.) but with a new driver, and if anyone bought a used component (for about 10% of the new price) and dared to update the driver so it would work with newer machines (which refused to work with the old drivers) they would sue and win.

mzs 13y ago

It's a bit sad that TTS could not be enabled on 133MHz machines with 64MB of RAM, but that's just how it is now-a-days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Automatic_Mouth