hollombe@ttidca.TTI.COM (The Polymath) (07/18/90)
Some of you may have wondered about my Organization: line in the posting
header. Citicorp(+)TTI makes and programs all Citicorp automatic teller
machines. These ATMs are known internally as Customer Activated Terminals
or CATs. So, now you know. Why am I telling you this? Read on.
Our current generation of ATMs are known as CAT2 and CAT2A. They're
remarkable beasties, operated by colorgraphic touch screens and generating
more MIPS than some low end workstations. They've almost made a video
game out of banking. They are not, however, the subject of this post.
No, my subject is CAT-1 -- the previous generation Citicorp ATM. This was
the beast I was originally hired to program. It was 8085 based and
programmed in a proprietary version of 8085 assembler. The interesting
thing is it provided essentially the same functionality as the CAT2(A),
minus the frills. i.e.: It allowed a customer to withdraw cash, make
deposits, transfer funds and review their balances. It did so in three
languages: English, Spanish and Chinese, no less. The miracle is, it did
all this in a 64K address space (bank switched to a wopping 128K of total
memory) with no operating system at all. We debugged its software
upgrades with a logic analyzer and a debugger that could modify core
memory on the fly while the machine was running. Truly a hacker's
machine.
Last month, somewhere in Puerto Rico, the last on-line CAT-1 in the world
died when a pipe broke and flooded it with water. It was the end of an
era. We shall not see their like again (though IBM's latest ATM has a lot
of surface features in common with them). I held a small ceremony and
burned the last of the maintenance listings.
CAT2(A) is programmed in a high level language. It has an operating
system. It has orders of magnitude more memory than CAT-1. It's BORING
(from a hacker's standpoint, of course. Our customers love it).
Nostalgia ain't what it used to be. Furthermore, it never was.
--
The Polymath (aka: Jerry Hollombe, M.A., CDP, aka: hollombe@ttidca.tti.com)
Citicorp(+)TTI Illegitimis non
3100 Ocean Park Blvd. (213) 450-9111, x2483 Carborundum
Santa Monica, CA 90405 {csun | philabs | psivax}!ttidca!hollombetr@samadams.princeton.edu (Tom Reingold) (07/20/90)
Mr. Polymath,
That's an interesting story. I am surprised you have already replaced
those good old machines. I had no complaints about them when I had a
Citibank account in NYC. I didn't like the fact that they were not
networked with the rest of the country's banks, but that may not speak
against the machines themselves. Is anyone at Citibank addressing this
issue? I think it's a serious one.
You say that the customers love the new machines. WHY? They do the
same thing. They just have prettier graphics. The ads on TV were
ridiculous. Customers say they like the machines because they can do
everything on them: check balances, withdraw, deposit, etc. Wow. Just
like the low tech machines invented 20 years ago. But they make it
sound as if it's an inovation. Or did I miss something about them?
--
Tom Reingold
tr@samadams.princeton.edu
rutgers!princeton!samadams!tr
201-577-5814
"Brew strength depends upon the
amount of coffee used." -Black&Decker