They have Epson LX-810 Printers (Dot Matrix). DOS Developers had to really make magic with the limited amount of colors…į) A *LOT* of DrugStores are using DOS software (at least in Spain, and I’ve seen one Commodore 128 when I was in vacations in Argentina!!!). It crashes from time to time, so you have to reboot the whole thing (don’t worry, it has nothing to do with the aircraft flying systems)Į) CEPSA Gas Station: Although these are being replaced as we speak, it was very easy to see the old DOS terminals controlling the Fuel flow… the screen colors were UGLY (brown/black). I’ve seen PC-DOS booting there.ĭ) Airbus A340: The big airbus uses Caldera DR-DOS for its internal GPS software (me->pilot). (One of them runs it under Windows 2000, altough the software is DOS based).Ĭ) AENA Barajas Intl’ Airport: The old Terminal 1, runs (although the new terminal 4 uses W2k/XP) a Novell Network (i’ve seen it booting quite a few times) to display Timetables for arrivals/departures. If you visit Madrid, I can show you at least 4. They must’ve been modern when they brought ’em (that’s how they look).ī) Dozens of Bars/Restaurants across Madrid have DOS and some sort of Clipper software to handle the business. The Cash Registers are quite old, they run a software under DOS. You have no power to decide anything, you just want to know how many business rely on DOS? Ok… let me name you a few…Ī) Supermercados Estrella: Spain. It’s like trying to convince a writter who uses a Mechanical Typing Machine that he’s wrong, because “there are modern alternatives”. Sure, although I don’t see why I have to exclude those who have no “modern alternative”. Also please chose the ones for which there is no modern alternative. Which would you do: download FreeDOS, or invest $150,000 over the next five years on Integrity XE. Very little has been made in the way of improvements in the core matching algorithms in that time, but it works on Win32. Automatch was subsequently went public as Verity, was bought out by Ascential who in turn were recently bought out by IBM, who sell a product based on Automatch (the Integrity XE suite) for about $80,000, with mandatory support payments of $10,000 a year. Here is a simple example: in 1992 you could buy some advanced, DOS matching software called Automatch for about $5,000. Now that this is out, they can run these programs on FreeDOS on the host OS of their choice. In the past, this has meant keeping certain machines running the likes of Windows 98 to keep them running. Thus, due to the enormous expensive, loss of time (which itself is expensive) and risk of data-corruption, a lot of businesses simply cannot afford to ditch this old software. Quite often it is impossible to wholly re-create the original piece of software. Further, it is often the case that when a re-write is attempted, some data will get corrupted during the tranlsation phase, and some bugs will appear during use that were dealt with in the DOS version. Re-writing all that software, and porting over the old data maintained by it (often in a binary format) is a huge and expensive task. A huge number of organisations rely on bespoke software developed in the late eighties and early nineties by either in-house by staff who have since left, or externally companies that have since gone out of business or been folded into other, larger organisations.
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