Strangest OS you have seen out in the wild?

[Gaysquirt]

Betting stall near my crib still running Windows 7 professional.Connected to the net ofc.

 

[ZMOT]

Connected to the net ofc.

well, they obviously like to gamble...

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Weirdest I ever encountered was OSCAR, the custom system used in Rogers Video stores when I worked there.

It was the POS software, library management and inventory system, time clock, payroll system, basically everything involved in running a video rental store in one custom package. 17 modules by 32 different programmers.

Every time a new function was added, shit broke. Badly.

The highlight was when they FINALLY gave us the ability to search by more than title. Whenever I used the function, and only me out of the entire nationwide chain according to the head of corporate IT ops said, it completely crashed our whole store. Every time, without fail, regardless of any variable. My user account took out the whole store.

The IT Ops chief tried my profile at 30 different stores, same result everywhere, every time.

 

[Jump]

The closest thing I can think of that I remember is seeing an old Sun Microsystems workstation running JavaOS years ago in my old college library.

I worked at cableco ISP and the control for the Scientific-Atlanta system and DOCSIS crap was Sun sparc stations, and I am pretty sure they where running that. I played with SunOS 2.6 and Solaris 10 later on and the interface was nothing like the Java system the S-A terminals ran.
We had a rash of cloned surfboard modems on our system and I would spend hours in the headend on it helping the tech in the field figure out which one was the real modem so I could kill the cloned ones..

Not a strange OS, but I once saw a Windows Server 2003

I just picked up another site thats using NT4 on a massive old door access system. I got called out to it because the hard drivebearings where screaming and it wasn't taking card updates. I slapped one of those cheap SCSI to SD card drives on it and told 'em GOOD LUCK.

 

[Creative Username]

whoever finds a lisp machine gets to win this thread

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I didn't find a lisp machine today, but the POS system at a petrol station I went to today was running Windows 3.1.
Was more amazed then anything else, surprised they haven't migrated to anything else considering it was connected to the internet.

 

[Nanachi]

I was once in a building that had an elevator touchpad that was a touchscreen LCD display. It was running some embedded Windows that looked like 7, and the application hosting the touchpad interface had crashed, revealing it to be a webapp inside Internet Explorer.
Not really a strange OS but a strange and totally unneeded application of a familiar one.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I think people would be alarmed if they knew how much stuff running the world is still using ActiveX websites.
Many critical systems worldwide, but mostly private stuff people would never see on the outside.

 

[Creative Username]

I think people would be alarmed if they knew how much stuff running the world is still using ActiveX websites.
Many critical systems worldwide, but mostly private stuff people would never see on the outside.

it worked in 2006 when it was made and still works today so why fuck with it

 

[byron]

My user account took out the whole store.

Was your username: ‘;drop table user

 

[Samuel Fuller]

Was your username: ‘;drop table user

No, that would have made sense and been an easy fix.

 

[ditto]

The closest thing I can compare OpenVMS to is Windows in a parallel universe, where it was not Jeeted but also became a server OS.

Not surprising as Dave Cutler was the designer of both VMS and NT (but crucially not of the Windows part)

Windows API could not be made fully compatible with OS/2

I think it was the other way around. The Windows API came first but apparently the IBM engineers absolutely fucking hated Windows for reasons and intentionally made OS/2's Presentation Manger APIs annoying different.

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

Not surprising as Dave Cutler was the designer of both VMS and NT (but crucially not of the Windows part)

Its sad that Windows has been ruined because the really low level stuff like NT is amazing.
Dave Cutler is an absolute legend, once he stopped working on NT itself he became the lead developer for Azure, then moved onto making the customised Windows version for the Xbox. Still works for Microsoft at 83.
Very long but this is a nice podcast with him. He is 81 here and he is still sane and capable of intellectual work, very impressive.

 

[BABANGUIDE64]

Some of the lab equipment which does simple operations works under Android

 

[YoRHa No. 2 Type B]

I was at a casino today, and noticed one of the older slot machines had crashed and restarted.
Once it came back up I saw that it was running a heavily modified version of Windows XP Embedded, vendor had gone so far to change the XP start up screen to their own logo.
No clue why a slot machine would still be running an (almost) 25 year old version of Windows. Would have thought literal money machines would be more secure then that, especially considering they are connected to the internet.

 

[teriyakiburns]

No clue why a slot machine would still be running an (almost) 25 year old version of Windows. Would have thought literal money machines would be more secure then that, especially considering they are connected to the internet.

No need to bother with security when they can just break your legs.

 

[Harvey Danger]

No clue why a slot machine would still be running an (almost) 25 year old version of Windows. Would have thought literal money machines would be more secure then that, especially considering they are connected to the internet.

Slot machines are one of the most heavily regulated gadgets in the country. Electronic slot machines took a while to pass approval. It's possible the local gambling Board is so unwilling to approve new, untested software, that the machine manufacturers just keep upgrading what is grandfathered in.

 

[Kuroyuri]

Whatever runs on an HP 1000 from the 70s is the strangest thing I've seen. I believe it did water measurements. It still runs to this day.