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Comment by CodeWriter23

7 hours ago

Costco. Go to a supervisor in a red vest and ask what other Costco has the item that has stocked out and you'll see. No idea what the backend is but the app they use is a terminal emulator that looks straight out of the late 80's.

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CodeWriter23

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jamal-kumar  6 hours ago

Here's a photo for anyone curious:

https://mastodon.social/@nixCraft/111839478303640635

It's also worth noting that the original mainframe hardware has likely been virtualized at this point. Used to work for a company that was doing a lot of that around 15 years ago

  • RaftPeople  5 hours ago

    > that the original mainframe hardware has likely been virtualized at this point

    The as400 is a mini-computer, the high end of this line overlaps the low end of mainframe.

    When I did some consulting work out there many years ago, they had a network of the largest as400's that IBM makes, connected together in one image.

    Regarding virtualization: It would have to be on IBM's power processors. IBM does offer cloud services running as400, I have no info on whether Costco is using that or not.

RaftPeople  5 hours ago

It's a network of high end as400's, the software is custom.

They've burned multiple 100's of millions of dollars on multiple projects trying to re-develop and move off as400's, but they just pulled the plug on their most recent project a year or two ago.

The biggest issue with adoption on new system (based on insiders I've talked to) is that the existing system is very efficient for people knowledgeable about how to use it and the newer GUI based systems just don't match it.