Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Old Operating Systems Never Die...

This was wild. The ATM at my workplace was frozen on a welcome screen (in spanish, no less) and nothing happened when I slid my card or pressed any buttons.

Being a computer geek, I decided the thing just needed to be rebooted. So I found where the electrical cord was plugged into the wall and... unplugged it. I counted to ten and plugged it back in (half expecting an alarm to go off, followed immediately by the appearance of armed security guards...) and waited for it to boot up.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this:

ATM

I could hardly believe it! OS2/Warp? Didn't that OS die around the time Windows 95 came out? Well, apparently not. I wonder how much IBM makes from licensing OS2 on the billions of ATM's out there?

(It's times like this that make me glad for a camera-phone.)