On Sat, 20 Jul 2024 06:46:40 +1000, Wayne Bickerdike <wayn...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Some kind of false economy to make the PC the entire tool of choice for >certain routine tasks. > >In the 1980s we had proprietary banking terminals, private/leased line >point to point communications and passbooks. This is a topic of interest to me. I still program in C90 too. Still restrict myself to S/370 instructions too (quibbling aside). However - for what reason would a proprietary banking terminal be more reliable than a PC? Isn't it more the automatic update feature of the PC that is the issue? That won't protect against a date-related bug in some component though. So perhaps 2 different PC solutions (e.g. the Amiga) - if we're talking 1980s. >No way our branch network would be unable to perform front counter >transactions. We had store and forward whereby local transactions would be >kept until the network was back up and running. > >In those days we had 3 ATMs, preferring to let other banks provide that >service and we would absorb the fees. > >I drew out $620 in cash from an ATM yesterday, just a few hours before the >crash. Too many people are embracing the cashless world. Time to wake up >and apply some common sense. Are you suggesting using physical cash because software and hardware engineers are unable to create a reliable alternative? The cost of handling physical cash is likely hidden in taxes or whatever. If it was properly costed, maybe IBM mainframes would be part of the solution, and Amigas too? Note that I created PDOS because I didn't want to be dependent on millions of lines of code that I didn't understand and/or didn't have access to. Simplicity. For simple tasks. My wife didn't have access to her bank account for about 6 months because she either wasn't receiving SMSes at all (from this one bank), or they would arrive too late. No-one was able to do anything other than say "try again later". 6 digits could have been sent with a Commodore 64 and a 300 bps modem to any spot on earth within 0.2 seconds in the 1980s. That was in 2023, but even in 2024 SMSes still get lost - and other situations too - I think Discord lost a message of mine in 2024. I don't remember a zmodem file transfer ever losing a file of mine. BFN. Paul. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
