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Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 22 Sep 2009 23:26
by Super S
More fantastic pictures. Hopefully there are some IBM pics out there as well.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 00:07
by Transit Road
The NCR 280 pictures make me want to say "TYFSAK"

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 05:46
by catnapped
IBM 3663: Image

IBM 3684: Image

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 10:49
by Super S
I'm glad this thread hasn't been left to die. Thanks for the IBM pics. The 3684 looks like what Safeway had in this area until the early 90s or so. Some stores had the green display like in that picture, while others had an orange display.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 12:44
by catnapped
Super S wrote:I'm glad this thread hasn't been left to die. Thanks for the IBM pics. The 3684 looks like what Safeway had in this area until the early 90s or so. Some stores had the green display like in that picture, while others had an orange display.
I *think* the difference between the 3683 and 3684 might be that display. The older one had the red/orange numerals with a bunch of status lights (red bulbs next to printed text), while the 3684 as in the picture had an alphanumerical display. Offhand, I remember Rickel's and some Ames stores had 3683s while the only place I remember seeing the pictured one was one Jamesway store (rest of the chain that I'd actually been to had 4683s)

It's kind of annoying that there really is limited information about a lot of these older POS systems readily available on the internet. I'm guessing since these are essentially "dumb" machines (needing a central server elsewhere in the store...and long obsolete now), there's really not much interest in these as opposed to the mechanical units pre-1970s

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 17:00
by krogerclerk
Kroger used IBM 3663, NCR 2552, and NSC/ICL 2100 during the 80's. The National Semiconductors were with or without the POStalker feature. It seems to be hardest to find info the National Semiconductors models as the NSC sold the register business to ICL which is now a unit of Fujitsu. Grand Union was heavy on the ICL 2100 POStalker in both Big Star and its namesake stores. Kroger seemed to limit the usage to its Carolina division in Kroger Sav-on bannered stores.

Kmart, its subsidiaries( Waldenbooks for example), and Melville Corp/Meldisco(Kay Bee, Deck the Walls, etc) were the most common users of the IBM 3684. It seems that most other chains went from IBM 3663 to NCR 2552 then to IBM 4680 series in the 90's. Probably the one thing about the IBM 3600 series that worked against them was the arrangement of department keys and tender keys were backwards to other registers, be it NCR, ICL or another brand with the tender keys on the right and department keys on the left.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 23 Sep 2009 19:00
by Super S
catnapped wrote:
Super S wrote:I'm glad this thread hasn't been left to die. Thanks for the IBM pics. The 3684 looks like what Safeway had in this area until the early 90s or so. Some stores had the green display like in that picture, while others had an orange display.
I *think* the difference between the 3683 and 3684 might be that display. The older one had the red/orange numerals with a bunch of status lights (red bulbs next to printed text), while the 3684 as in the picture had an alphanumerical display. Offhand, I remember Rickel's and some Ames stores had 3683s while the only place I remember seeing the pictured one was one Jamesway store (rest of the chain that I'd actually been to had 4683s)

It's kind of annoying that there really is limited information about a lot of these older POS systems readily available on the internet. I'm guessing since these are essentially "dumb" machines (needing a central server elsewhere in the store...and long obsolete now), there's really not much interest in these as opposed to the mechanical units pre-1970s
I know the display you speak of. The one I was referring to, though, looked EXACTLY like the one in the picture, but had an orange, segmented type of display. Safeway is the chain where I remember these were widely used, some used the green, some used the orange.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 15:06
by klkla
Transit Road wrote:The NCR 280 pictures make me want to say "TYFSAK"
Why? I don't get it.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 15:16
by klkla
Super S wrote:The 3684 looks like what Safeway had in this area until the early 90s or so. Some stores had the green display like in that picture, while others had an orange display.
In Southern California we used "Datacheckers" made by National Seminconductor at Safeway. I remember the main frame was kept in the bookkeeper's office and was about six feet tall... maybe the size of a large refrigerator. The registers had an annoying talk feature that would call out prices but we almost always turned it off because it couldn't keep up with the speed we were actually scanning the items and the customers would become confused and angry.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 24 Sep 2009 21:24
by BillyGr
klkla wrote:
Transit Road wrote:The NCR 280 pictures make me want to say "TYFSAK"
Why? I don't get it.
Why not ;)

Seriously - I believe that TYFSAK is the acronym for Thank You For Shopping At Kmart, so I'm guessing that Kmart had this type of register at one time?

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 02:08
by Transit Road
Yes, "TYFSAK" is an acronym for "Thank You For Shopping At K-Mart".

At the K-Mart locations in the Buffalo, NY Metro Area (and most likely, many other areas), each NCR 280 installed in the store had a sticker placed to the left of the keypad that emphasized the phrase "TYFSAK". As a wee lad when our local suburban K-Mart opened at Maple & Transit Roads, I puzzled over the meaning of the phrase. I was baffled by this cryptic message for many years, but in later years finally found out the meaning of "TYFSAK".

Sadly, the store was closed several years ago, demolished, and replaced by a Lowe's Home Improvement store.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 11:27
by Super S
klkla wrote:
Super S wrote:The 3684 looks like what Safeway had in this area until the early 90s or so. Some stores had the green display like in that picture, while others had an orange display.
In Southern California we used "Datacheckers" made by National Seminconductor at Safeway. I remember the main frame was kept in the bookkeeper's office and was about six feet tall... maybe the size of a large refrigerator. The registers had an annoying talk feature that would call out prices but we almost always turned it off because it couldn't keep up with the speed we were actually scanning the items and the customers would become confused and angry.
The old, now-demolished Albertsons at Overland & Vista in Boise, a former Marina Safeway, had these, with the talking feature too. I think that it was actually Safeway's system that Albertsons kept, along with the Safeway interior, until Albertsons remodeled the store in the mid-80s. The Safeway in Mountain Home had a very similar setup. Albertsons used NCR at every other Boise store at the time. Albertsons actually installed the talking feature on many of the NCR registers in the 1980s as stores were remodeled, two I remember are Broadway and the old Boise Ave. & Apple store.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 11:38
by Super S
krogerclerk wrote:Kroger used IBM 3663, NCR 2552, and NSC/ICL 2100 during the 80's. The National Semiconductors were with or without the POStalker feature. It seems to be hardest to find info the National Semiconductors models as the NSC sold the register business to ICL which is now a unit of Fujitsu. Grand Union was heavy on the ICL 2100 POStalker in both Big Star and its namesake stores. Kroger seemed to limit the usage to its Carolina division in Kroger Sav-on bannered stores.

Kmart, its subsidiaries( Waldenbooks for example), and Melville Corp/Meldisco(Kay Bee, Deck the Walls, etc) were the most common users of the IBM 3684. It seems that most other chains went from IBM 3663 to NCR 2552 then to IBM 4680 series in the 90's. Probably the one thing about the IBM 3600 series that worked against them was the arrangement of department keys and tender keys were backwards to other registers, be it NCR, ICL or another brand with the tender keys on the right and department keys on the left.
I moved around the U.S. quite a bit during the 1980s. Kmart had a hodgepodge of registers depending on where you were. In Boise, I remember the 280 at the Fairview store, but the long-gone Americana store had Data Terminal Systems registers identical to the ones PayLess Drug had. I also remember some using the red-number style of the NCR 2152, at least one with the NCR 255, IBM 3683/3684, and one in the Seattle area which had the 4683. After Kmart installed scanners, this continued for a while, the IBM variants were used, along with a couple of newer NCR setups, and most common around here were Fujitsu machines. Kmart seems to have finally adopted one common register, IBM, across the board.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 13:47
by klkla
BillyGr wrote:
klkla wrote:
Transit Road wrote:The NCR 280 pictures make me want to say "TYFSAK"
Why? I don't get it.
Why not ;)

Seriously - I believe that TYFSAK is the acronym for Thank You For Shopping At Kmart, so I'm guessing that Kmart had this type of register at one time?
OK... Now I get it. I only remember being in a KMart once or twice when I was a kid and don't remember any of that. Thanks.

Re: UPC codes & grocery scanning

Posted: 25 Sep 2009 19:54
by Brian Lutz
Just out of curiousity, does anyone know what type of systems Price Club (one of the precursors to the current Costco) used back during this timeframe? For several years during the mid to late Eighties, I remember that the store we occasionally went to in Albuquerque had a system where the cashiers manually keyed in item numbers, but there were no barcode scanners in use until several years later.