Ah, so that's why the displays at Mc Donalds always look like old MS DOS programms that run in text mode.

later in 2077: This Commercial Kitchen Appliance Uses an Original Threadripper Clone CPU

The Motorola 68000 is like 40+ years old and it's modern counterparts are also still being used in many modern applications to this day, including radiation hardened versions used on spacecraft

PC speaker, PS/2 splitter and 4MB graphics memory? Sounds like a fine PC to run vanilla Doom on. 😀

Former McDonald's manager here. You should see the way they have those restaurants set up. At one point, my store was using devices running Windows XP Embedded (the POS), Linux (the KVS), and Unix (the Back Office Server). The fact they were able to get all this software running together in tandem across these different OS's absolutely blew my mind. Then, when we upgraded our systems, the POS (point of sale, the registers) were running Windows 7 Embedded, and we no longer use the Unix interface in the back office servers, but still amazes me how flawlessly they can get all these different systems running. It's all rather amazing, until you have an issue.

Mom, I want an iPad. No, we have an iPad at home. iPad at home:

I've noticed this thing being used at Wendy's. The "Clear" button is worn out because they push it every time they complete an order.

I have and did a video about an MSTI PDX-1000 thin client, which uses the Vortex86DX chip running at 1 GHz. It's also based on a 586/Pentium-class CPU but the DX version lacks MMX. It came with a lightweight version of Linux, but can run any OS within the limits of its hardware capabilities, including DOS and Windows XP.

Having recognized the display font, I always assumed those displays were connected to literal PCs running DOS or something unix-esque, so the idea that it's got a pentium in it isn't any kind of shock at all.

As far as it being drop tested, it's usually placed under a small monitor above the french fry station and the spot where finished orders are placed. There could be an earthquake, there could be a fire, someone might just be mad that they accidently received extra onions and then decide to take it out on the kitchen gadgets. Anything is possible.

I used to work in POS support- these were typically called a "Bump Bar." edit: This is a really advanced bump bar compared to what we supported a decade ago. And it supports external bump bars in addition to its own buttons!

Obligatory “the iPad at home” joke And man I feel you on that harness around the AC jack. One of the reasons I taught myself to solder was on account of the fact that I got so tired buying new CD players (this was the 90s still, so not cheap) when I’d inevitably break the headphone jack. Always hated how flimsy they were.

Worked at McD's and can tell you these things took a beating. Had one that was sluggish to work until the kitchen warmed up and I guess the bad solder made contact lol

I used to work in a commercial kitchen and I may have an explanation for why we use systems like these: It just works. While the Front Of House is going from table to table to receive, input, and deliver orders and the Back of House is prepping, preparing, and cooking the food the last thing you want is for a complex backbone of your system to stop working. A failure in these devices increases time for both parts of the system to effectively communicate with each other. A key idea to keep in mind is "the more moving parts something has, the more likely something is going to go wrong". If a complex machine that is integral to your system goes down are you going to be able to fix it? Do you need someone to specialize in fixing it? If the answer is yes, do you have the money to employ or contract people to fix it? How much time will it take for them to respond? A commercial kitchen is a faced paced environment. Stress levels are high and the last thing you want is to add more for your cooks/servers. These devices are so simple that anyone can use it. Adding a layer of complexity, no matter how small, impairs the entire team. It stays because it works; proven over time.

This is very interesting. I work part-time in a kitchen and we have a similar system. I'd never given much thought to how the system works until I was working late one night and at 12:30am the whole system does a daily reboot, and as it was coming back online I saw it run through the process of initializing all the kitchen screens before I caught a glimpse of "starting MS DOS". It's pretty crazy how these ancient systems are still relied upon in so many applications, but sometimes you really do just need a simple, barebones system that is bulletproof and will just work no matter the circumstances. I remember one day we had a power cut for about an hour, and just before it happened I had some tickets on the screen. When the power came back, after a couple of beeps the system came right back and all the tickets were still there waiting, it even kept track of the time they were on!

I bet it could run Doom.

...everybody thought the same: "it runs Dos... then it MUST run DOOM!" 🤟🤩💥

Boy that's a THICC thermal pad.

4:15 The first generations probably failed from a broken-off DC jack, so they reinforced it. And VGA, RS232 and RS485 are still super-common with kitchens, like printers.

I really like just how bespoke they've made this device, it's a true "Purpose Built" machine rather than something generic being loosely repurposed for a given task, as happens so often these days. A current product but a design philosophy from the good old days. Thank you for sharing!

Be carful when working with old brittle plastic, guys. Just put a small screwdriver thru my middle finger last week when trying to fix an old digital thermometer. I was holding it in my left hand when trying to undo the inner screws to the motherboard when the whole thing just broke into pieces in my hand and I jammed the screwdriver thru my finger. Thankfully it didn’t hit anything vital so it’s pretty much healed right now, but it was definitely one of the freakiest accidents I’ve been involved in.

The touchscreen feature is so that you can bump orders directly pressing the display. Where I work this is done with thin clients hooked to touchscreens, and there's a physical "dumb" bump bar keypad just in case the touchscreen functionality fails at some busy moment, so you don't have to forcibly restart the windows powered thin client to reload the touch drivers.

Now let's talk abour Mars Rover CPU :)

I enjoyed that even in the mid '00s, bowling alleys near me still used computers for the score display that were very obviously outputting CGA. Two palettes it would cycle between- green/brown/red, or white/magenta/cyan.

I always watch your videos in my downtime at work on Fridays, so seeing your videos in my sub box always evokes those happy Friday vibes.

Alternate title: "This iPAD runs DOS"

IIRC that LPDDR3 will run at much lower power than older RAM chips so it could have been a 2 birds 1 stone kinda design decision on their part.

In the early 2000's I was working at a Steel mill where the Process Control unit (similar to a PLC) was based on a custom board running a Intel Pentium 2 chip and a real-time Unix OS ( we had to run 4 to control one rolling mill). Around 2012 we wanted to upgrade and the latest product was based on a Pentium 3 , which was out of production for 5 years already! They booted off a compact flash card that couldn't be bigger than 8MB... oh the good old days.

When I worked at McDs these things would fall pretty often. Probably good that they're drop tested haha.

They added the wire around the DC jack becaus they have seen your FLUKE networkanalyzer video! :-) Greetings, Doc64!

I waited for you to say: "And now let's run DOOM on this!". Next episode maybe?

This is so cool! I've seen these in fast food establishments for years and always wondered what they do. Thanks for doing this!

This is basically a stripped down pc/104 device. That is why these old style chips still exist.

I remember reading about the Rise mp6 CPU back in the late 90's. I remember reading a review about one online and it was slower than the Winchip. No wonder why it didn't last long. But it's fascinating to see old technology still being used today.

In the year 2000 I worked for a small Point-of-Sale manufacturer. They had a lot of devices that used off-brand 386 CPUs and ran MS-DOS. I thought those were outdated back then. Crazy to see stuff like this still being produced in 2021. Thanks for the video!

USB mouse and PS/2 keyboard. The ultimate combo.

Yep, we had these when I worked at Pizza Hut. They were not permanently mounted though, they sat on top of the make stations with their monitors so you could press the buttons. They did constantly fall off and we did have to restart them often because they crashed all the time. Never knew it was a Pentium inside, I'd considered buying one for the novelty until I saw the prices. Ours only had 2 buttons: green and red. EDIT: You actually showed this, neat VGA is used because in a lot of these industrial settings it's still very common to see them. Obviously this isn't a performance gaming machine and let's be honest you'll never see it do much of anything impressive on that display, so using the more expensive connector and forcing thousands of upgrades to more modern monitors is not in their interest.

Bars and restaurants usually have a touchscreen POS system. They have a lot of items. That's how Starbucks was setup back when I worked there 10+ years ago.

National Semiconductor (Texas Instruments) had their own Pentium class embedded chip named the Geode. It was sold on and at one point became an AMD product. That product line also included a slightly different Cyrix CPU design, differentiated by a few letters at the end. There's a Wikipedia article for the series, though I have only used the original design in a Soekris displayless board.

So glad to see this as I have always wondered what the kitchen monitors used in fast food restaraunts looked like they were running some sort of DOS compatible hardware

I think a lot of products like this exist because the source code is long gone for some binary library and they have to continue maintaining x86 compatability with it.

On a tangent, I hate how so many fast food places completely got rid of their fixed sign menus in favour of monitors. It's a real pain, if I'm ordering, to have to wait for the monitors to rotate through the screens to get back to my area of interest (usually chicken sandwiches) and show me all of the chicken sandwich options. I don't mind the presence of monitors to showcase things, especially the limited time menu items, but there should still be some fixed analogue menu signage.

I was re-watching old videos already. Thanks!

I'm sure this product has been re-engineered multiple times over the years as well. You can see they have two footprints for the flash memory, that's a part that very commonly goes obsolete and needs replacement. Another interesting thing I wonder how they implemented is the MTBF counter. I wonder how they read that back? It's got a connector for the JTAG so maybe over that. Anyway I work with embedded devices and it's always interesting to see how other people do it. My company here in the Twin Cities has made a ton of Windows CE products and, while they're in very different applications to this, much of it is the same.

Cool video! With ARM being so popular, it is interesting to see x86 still being used. That DDR is 1Gb so it's 128MB. The 8Mb x16 just refers to the bus width for access. If you scroll down to pages 17/18 in the datasheet, you will see that for x16 there are 16 DQn pads, compared to the x4 and x8 bus versions.

Since the Vortex86 being used in commercial applications, specifically where money is being dealt with, I think it should get the following modifications: - Decimal floating point arithmetic. You don't want floating point errors screwing with your monetary transactions. -...actually, that's it.

@ This Does Not Compute I have fixed a lot of these over the last few years. The wire over the power jack does help, but it's not really enough, but there is another version of this, that you can not tell from this one without opening it up, that uses a full-length metal sleeve or the jack, and that one is better at protecting the power jack from being torqued. The issue with the second version is the sleeve and short out the power jack, and kill the board. The solder points for the metal loop wire or sleeve are not properly isolated from carrying current.

Just randomly stumbled into your channel with this video and I'm absolutely delighted. I subscribed already, I'll check your back catalog in a bit. Keep up the good work my dude.

That would make a really decent DOS box.

As a former fast food worker, I got haunted by hearing “bump” and “order” together

Back in 2005 or so I used to build systems (print servers, firewalls, 2u servers and such) at an OEM with factory new Intel P2 + P3 processors. When I built them I wondered where the F they got their inventory from.

God this video is so cool! I love the way you explain things!!

+1 for next video installing DOS / network drivers / using for retro gaming. :)

So cool to see this video now as I am buying one of these, the Ebox 2300.

Pretty cool. You don't normally hear much about these sorts of things, so it's nice to hear something.

The drop test was probably done as a "sure why not" because it usually comes as a packaged deal with *vibration* tests which I'm sure you can imagine are much more applicable to a product like this. Nearly every commercial electronics product undergoes *packaged* shock/vibe/drop tests to get their ISTA 3A and/or FedEx certification--if your product and packaging pass those tests then shipping carriers are more likely to take responsibility for damage. Unpackaged/bare unit tests tend to be more for higher end stuff or just up to the company designing it.

Aaaand someone is gonna make a Doom port for that

A lot of these have been swapped out for what are essentially smart tvs now, a thin client or similar low power arm hardware built in to the display handles it now. It's just cheaper overall.

Just discovered your channel with this, definitely gonna sub and see what pops up in the future!

i worked at walmart for a bit about 9 years ago and it was amazing how many of the back of house computers were still using crt monitors.

That would be cool for someone that want to make industrial retro style laptop for systems that also use a simulation chip

I can see that the CMOS battery, is made in my country, Indonesia. Yes, there is a Panasonic battery factory in Indonesia :D

I've always wondered what was inside those things but never before remembered to look it up... Glad I'm a subscriber because you answered my at least 15 year old curiosity.

Great video, just a note, here in Brazil most monitors sold have VGA, then you find monitors with VGA and HDMI in less quantity, and finally monitors with Display Port.

now that's an ipad

I like content like this

Thank you. You help me to broden my eyes. There used to be Transmeta, Rise, WinChip, and etc. It's good to see Rise has find a new market.

Now THAT is some funky hardware man. Thanks for sharin' eh.

Why not use ARM instead? It would use less power, the chips are more available, and can use a smaller form factor.

The software running might be written direct to the "metal" once upon a time (not even an MS-DOS application). Then it's just cheaper to find compatible components to keep it running.

I worked at a place that used one of these. Ours may have been a little bit different because I believe there was also a thin client of some sort attached to it but it was pretty easy to work with. The tickets turn yellow when they’re aging and then red when they’ve passed the acceptable threshold set by the manager. Pretty slick actually

Side note, my old workplace used an AS400 based system for warehousing, inventory, POS.... everything. Amazingly fast, stable and simple. Once you got your menu numbers memorised that system was wicked fast. I'm glad they still use it. Sometimes stripping stuff back to bare bones truly is the way forward. A lot of airlines still use a CLI front end at checkin. Both major airlines I worked for had gumballed a lot of fancy GUI & customer interactivity elements onto the very very powerful CLI/database driven ticketing/reservations system. You could delete whole flights if you wanted. Hate to be responsible for security on that. Probably leaks like a sieve .

Is it a (north) American thing to have such old parts in these kind of devices? I used to develop similar stuff and here it's like all modern stuff. Mostly ARM these days. Most work on some kind of mysql database, all lcd with hdmi

I've used ones with full d-pads and with a few other buttons so the extra pins make sense, but here is the important question, can it run doom?

When I worked at a Burger King we had a system similar to this. It was a Micros by Epson and it ran Windows CE.

Great video!! Never knew commercial kitchens are running such kool retro hardware!!

I’m guessing you’ll find something similar driving the autopilot in a Boeing 777. And I’m not being derogatory.

This video made me think that I should resurrect my Pentium Pro OverDrive.

Very interesting device and hardware solution. Thanks for sharing. 😉👌🏼

I service bump bars. They are usually implemented as a permanently mounted monitor that will never get replaced, an easily replaceable but inconveniently mounted control module, and an equally easily replaceable bump bar. They are exposed to airborne grease. I use safety glasses and multiple sets of gloves when servicing these devices and they are very slippery. Those of you who haven’t been to a commercial restaurant kitchen can’t imagine the amount of grease that’s in the air and on the floor. You must wear anti-slip shoes whenever you step into the kitchen area. The control units used to run a custom OS, but now they run an emulator running that OS on Windows CE. The most common failure is the bent pin in the PS/2 cable between the control unit and the bump bar. Control units are difficult to access in a rush and when an employee tries to reconnect the PS/2 cable they sometimes bend the pin. The device still receives power and lights up but the buttons are inoperable. Similarly, power jacks must be robust. I have seen plenty of broken power jacks. By integrating the control unit into the bump bar and thus eliminating the brittle PS/2 cable, they increase reliability of the system. The tiny speaker is important. Kitchen appliances confirm all input with audible beeps.

Anyone down to play some doom with this thing ?

The original iPad.

Please make more of these kinds of videos, I don't think I could work in a kitchen as it's too fast paste for me, so it's neat to learn about the tech they use there. You are right if it ain't brock don't fix it.

I have two Sega Genesis model two systems that are the same revision, VA3, that came out of different factories at different times as I recall. One of them has cracked joints on the power input and on the controller ports. The other one has some improvements. I forget if the power input is reinforced or modified the same way here, but they did improve it. It's definitely a common problem, as you point out and good to see they took care of that with this thing. As for the Genesis controller port, they changed the design to use long pins to take the stress off the board itself.

Great video. I learned something new about a "modern" device based on what many consider obsolete technology

I used to work at a McDonalds in the UK, up until 2020. I can confirm they were still using a computer similar to this.

That's fancier than any bump bar I've ever seen. The restaurants I've worked in usually have them connected to the KDS via separate network CPU that's then fed to a server in the office. Only input on the board is a proprietary connector that kinda looks like a Svideo input.

I remember buying a Vortex 386 SBC 25+ years ago

I work for a company in Australia that still makes devices with Vortex86DX chips for traffic control embedded systems and power system SCADA (System Control And Data Acquisition). I think our designs were done in the mid to late 2000s, with some updates in the mid 2010s for newer form factors with software back compatibility due to the same underlying chips. The industry is moving towards Linux on ARM, but the long life, support. and certification requirements of many commercial products mean these are still made new today. We actually had a bricked board a few weeks ago during a bios update. The bios SPI flash is inside the SOC and requires a specific parallel port to JTAG adapter from DM&P connected to a Windows PC (Probably win9x) to recover it. We have lost the parallel port adapter so it was quicker and cheaper to just replace the entire Vortex86 BGA chip.

It's funny, I had something like this bar when I ran my pizza place in the early 2000's. I can't remember the company that made it, but like you said it was very turnkey for what it was. Amusing to think that the bar on my make line might've had as much computing power as the machine that ran our logistics. :) Thanks for the video and a look inside this little time capsule.

Many years ago, I was in a McDonald's restaurant, and the order system was using a Tandy Model 100. It had been re-cased in stainless steel with only a few keys remaining, but the shape was unmistakable. It was connected to an external monitor, of course. I was unable to determine if this was a one-off custom job or if other locations had the same hardware.

I remember using one of those boxes on our upcoming order screen when I worked in fast food.

Very nicely made from the electronic engineering point of view. Thing of beauty, joy for ever. A learning opportunity here. I'd still put the DVI out on it, in case of new deployments - VGA inputs are increasingly harder to find on new gear, and the DVI has been around for two decades, so any user who had anything to do with computers will know what it's for.

The technology on the last space shuttle mission was even older technology. VGA and HDMI are the low end combo for monitors while adding Display port increases cost, therefore the customers of this are searching for low end output. DVI is pretty much dead.

I had dealings with these years ago. These usually receive orders as a print job much like a receipt printer. Not a lot have 2 way communication with the POS. Once the order is sent from the POS system it’s considered as finished. From that point multiple KVS’s will talk to each other if the have multiple service areas. Grill, fryer, drink station ect.

I used one of these before, it was a very interesting piece of tech

These are mounted in places where they get banged around. One of the ones I clean is on its own arm with a whole display and sff pc. That gets pushed around a lot when cleaning. The ones for the sandvich lines are in line to get hit by everything from fists holding food to full chili wells.

Wow, you'd still think a Pi would be cheaper than a custom board!

great video. Super interesting

i used to work with one of these at my old job Also had a 2005-ish Celeron based POS terminal i managed to get my hands on as it was being thrown away, and the "new" units the store had used Bay Trail based Celerons with like 2 GB of RAM. not top tier hardware but seriously that's a lot of horsepower for a machine built to take orders and run a cash register.