I priced, purchased and installed the hardware for a retail grocery point-of-sale system, with only one hitch. Instead of the USB scanner I ordered, they sent me an RS-232 scanner. After the vendor failed to respond to my complaints, I realized that I needed an immediate solution to get the shop up an running on the new POS. I tested the RS232 connection on COM1 and COM1 received input from the scanner, but that data did not show up in the POS.
The problem: Although a serial connected scanner can easily send data to the OS through the COM1 port, our POS uses an internet browser for its touch screen GUI. COM1 data must be translated into keystroke text strings to register in the (browser-POS) UPC display fields.
The solution: After some research I found an excellent tool that runs extremely light on the system, called PC Wedge. PC Wedge translates the COM1 messages for the browser and bang, we are off an running! I have PC Wedge and the internet browser activate with the OS startup, so when the staff turns on the machine, all they have to do is to log in on the POS and they are ready to ring up customers.
