Microsoft recently announced that effective November 1st, 2008, OEMs will no longer be able to license Windows for Workgroups 3.11 in the embedded channel. It's the end of an era.
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If I remember correctly, few years back -probably 2~4 years- I saw some kiosk/bank ATM machines booting Windows for Workgroups 3.11 (I saw the logo)! 
Yeah, I saw some others booting Windows 2000 and XP though. But I didn't know that Microsoft was still selling the copies of Windows for Workgroups 3.11 ! Wow.. What about DOS? Anyone knows of companies using DOS in the embedded space around you? ;D
Member since:2006-07-06
Not so long ago, I dealt with a small austrian company specializing in online titration equipment. The central piece of kit was a DOS-powered box, controlling various pumps, valves and probes, showing trends on an LCD display, and outputting data via 4-20mA analog channels to the DeltaV system.
Speaking with the owner, he was contemplating switching his system to linux, but there definitely was no rush. Of course the whole thing needed updating (think about it, computers exchanging process data over an analog channel which needed calibrating...), but it did the job.
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This is truly the end of an era. Window for Workgroups 3.11 was the first version of Windows which me and many other people used. It was once widely available de facto operating system which was later replaced by 95. It took me at least till early '97 before I moved on to 95 SR2.
I haven't used it since then but there must have been embedded uses such as (but not including) ATM's long into the 21st century.
Edited 2008-07-10 02:18 UTC
Member since:2005-12-15
The first major Windows I used was Windows 2.0. I even found the original floppy disks two days ago, from 1988, and they still work!
Why is it 20 year old single density disks last longer than than 20 day old double sensity disks??!
I then upgraded to Windows 3.0, but couldn't go to Windows 3.11 because I didn't have a 286 or higher - it was an Amstrad 80286, 8Mhz, 640k, vga.
Ah the memories.
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Haha, 8Mhz, yeah I can remember those times. Today, even mobile phones have up to 600MHz!! I can remember that it wasn't long ago where Intel announced the 1Ghz-breakthrough for desktop computers! Now it won't be long until mobile phones run at 1GHz or more! This is just breathtaking.
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A local solicitors firm I know runs an old Amstrad 1512 with Dos 5 and Wordperfect. It has been running this since around 1990. It still works, and they have no need to replace it.
It does look and sound like something from a 50's B-Movie, but every time I visit the office, I glance at it and it makes me feel young again lol
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It's normally banks that hang on to these ancient OS's long after their expiration date.
When I worked for BankWest (a HBOS subsidiary) a couple of years ago, they were just upgrading their ATM's and teller machines from WindowsNT.
The only reason they did it was because the keyboard/card-reader manufacturer finally stopped providing an NT driver!
They were so tight with IT spending. All the branches were still on ISDN 128k internet, which was used for all ATM, teller and software update traffic. It did make us pretty economical with our updates though :-)
Member since:2006-01-06
When I worked for BankWest (a HBOS subsidiary) a couple of years ago, they were just upgrading their ATM's and teller machines from WindowsNT.
The only reason they did it was because the keyboard/card-reader manufacturer finally stopped providing an NT driver!
They were so tight with IT spending. All the branches were still on ISDN 128k internet, which was used for all ATM, teller and software update traffic. It did make us pretty economical with our updates though :-)
Apart from the ISDN thing, I see nothing wrong with that. Why spend money on upgrading ATMs when they work fine as is? What benefit is there to it?
Not upgrading ATMs just because they are old isn't being tight, it's being sensible.
Edited 2008-07-10 15:34 UTC
Member since:2005-10-19
Um no actually.
We often had cases of ATM machines crashing, or rebooting at inopportune times.
And thanks to the ultra slow connection they would do things like take an eternity to spit out money, so the frustrated users would go into the branch while the ATM meanwhile spits out the cash to another user.
As for the tellers, they were even worse, as we constantly tried to work around the ancient OS.
In short there comes a point where even if something appears to be "working", in actual fact you are spending far more in wasted man-hours of support time fighting all the grassfires.
Member since:2006-01-06
We often had cases of ATM machines crashing, or rebooting at inopportune times.
And thanks to the ultra slow connection they would do things like take an eternity to spit out money, so the frustrated users would go into the branch while the ATM meanwhile spits out the cash to another user.
As for the tellers, they were even worse, as we constantly tried to work around the ancient OS.
In short there comes a point where even if something appears to be "working", in actual fact you are spending far more in wasted man-hours of support time fighting all the grassfires.
Given that extra information, upgrading now sounds more sensible. The previous post made it sound like the upgrades were happening simply because the hardware/software was old.
BTW the ATMs crashing/rebooting sounds awfully like the consequences of failing hardware, rather than any software issue, but as you said, the manufacturer no longer provides NT drivers, so replacing the hardware necessitates the software upgrade.
However, the slowness of the connection seems to me to be a bit of a red herring. ATMs don't need to send/receive vast amounts of data. Here in the UK it is fairly common to see stand-alone ATMs in stores that connect to the bank over a dial-up modem, and they still don't take that long to work.
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Ah, the good old days. No DRM on anything. You anyone could easily hack the OS. Anybody could write a program that would run. The OS would fit on a few floppies. The worst part of that time period was the crappy, fuzzy, 60 hz monitors. Amazing more people didn't go blind!
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I remember have Windows 3.11 installed more of a gimmick than anything useful because it was one of the few programs that supported my hercules graphics card! But even then I would just play with mspaint. Any real work was done in DOS within StarOffice, and all games were played in DOS through my trusty CGA emulator.
