I do a lot of Windows installations that are quite obscure which for me at least gives merit to Windows being a highly adaptable operating system capable of many tasks it was never designed for.
I’ve had some ongoing issues with the Windows XP based Oracle VirtualBox virtual machine attached to my radio scanner. Intermittently it would crash. I solved the issue thinking its a driver problem with the Uniden USB-1 interface cable – by adding an automated daily reboot. I actually scheduled 3 reboots a minute apart starting at 2:45AM as the first request isn’t always honoured.
Ever since, the scan machine has been stable.
It is quite an obscure installation of Windows as its a virtual machine that’s interfaced to line-in jack on a soundcard and the Uniden USB-1 interface cable. Then it runs Icecast2 for Win32 and edcast to provide MP3 encoded live streams over HTTP. And then I’m also using ID Tracker III to provide tuning information to edcast for ID3 tags/metadata and to record any scan hits. And finally it uses rsync from cygwin to send recordings every minute to the public web server.
Another kind of obscure Windows installation I encounter fairly regularly is point of sale or cash registers running on PCs. These installs are typically obscure through their use of one to many serial receipt printers, cash drawers that have an ejection triggered by software, barcode scanners, pole displays (essentially a small LCD for the customer that displays items and totals, text is typically sent to pole displays via a serial interface), and sometimes even micro-tills running on PDA platforms attached by WiFi. I’ll be going to one of these sites today which should be endless joy trying to figure out a stability issue and adding a further printer to a bar so the cash register can serve as a communication device as it is used to send customer orders to distant staff members.
