OS/2 - Historical Uses

Historical Uses

OS/2 is widely used in Iran Export Bank (Bank Saderat Iran) in their teller machines, ATMs and local servers (over 30,000 working stations). As of 2011, The bank moved to virtualize and renew their infrastructure by moving OS/2 to Virtual Machines running over Windows.

OS/2 was widely used in Brazilian banks. Banco do Brasil had a peak 10,000 machines running OS/2 Warp in the 1990s. OS/2 was used in automated teller machines until 2006. The workstations and automated teller machines and attendment computers have been migrated to Linux.

OS/2 is still used in the banking industry. Suncorp bank in Australia still ran its ATM network on OS/2 as late as 2002. ATMs in Perisher Blue used OS/2 as late as 2009, and even the turn of the decade.

OS/2 also was widely adopted by accounting professionals and auditing companies. In mid-1990s native 32-bit accounting software were well developed and serving corporate markets.

OS/2 ran the faulty baggage handling system and Denver's new airport to replace Stapleton. The OS was eventually scrapped, but led to massive delays in the opening of the new airport.

OS/2 was used by radio personality Howard Stern. He once had a 10 minute on-air rant about OS/2 versus Windows 95 and recommended OS/2. He also used OS/2 on his IBM 760CD laptop.

OS/2 was used as part of the Satellite Operations Support System (SOSS) for NPR's Public Radio Satellite System. SOSS was a computer-controlled system using OS/2 that NPR member stations used to receive programming feeds via satellite. SOSS was introduced in 1994 using OS/2 3.0, and was retired in 2007, when NPR switched over to its successor, the ContentDepot.

OS/2 is still used to control the SkyTrain automated light rail system in Vancouver, Canada.

OS/2 was used in the London Underground Jubilee Line Extension Signals Control System (JLESCS) in London, UK. This control system delivered by Alcatel was in use from 1999 to 2011 i.e. between abandonment before opening of the line's unimplemented original automatic train control system and the present SelTrac system. JLESCS did not provide automatic train operation only manual train supervision. Six OS/2 local site computers were distributed along the railway between Stratford and Westminster, the shunting tower at Stratford depot, and several formed the central equipment located at Neasden. It was once intended to cover rest of the line between Green Park and Stanmore but this was never introduced.

OS/2 is still used by The Co-operative Bank in the UK for its domestic call centre staff, using a bespoke program created to access customer accounts which cannot easily be migrated to Windows.

OS/2 is still used by the Stop & Shop supermarket chain (and has been installed in new stores as recently as March 2010).

OS/2 is still used on ticket machines for Croydon Tramlink in outer-London (UK).

OS/2 is used in New York City’s subway system for MetroCards.

OS/2 is used in checkout systems at Safeway supermarkets.

OS/2 was used by Trenitalia, both for the desktops at Ticket Counters and for the Automatic Ticket Counters up to 2011. Incidentally, the Automatic Ticket Counters with OS/2 were more reliable than the current ones running a flavor of Windows.