Need help transferring programming from one POS machine to another

[rudeguy]

I'm working on a project at work programming a bunch of terminals. These are the credit card reader type terminals (Verifone Omni 3750).

The initial setup involves downloading the software from our supplier via a dial up connection, then downloading the bulk of the software via LAN. My problem is that the dial up download corrupts more than half the time. This causes my work to slow to a crawl because the dial up download takes nearly a half hour.

My thinking is if I could somehow extract a good download from a machine and side load it bypassing the dial up download, I could more than triple my production.

Does anyone have experience with this type of situation? Our supplier has very limited tech support and Verifone was just as bad.

 

[Markbnj]

Yeah I've worked with Verifone before. No fun there. How do you do the download? What's the protocol and whose client are you using? I assume the download has to take place in order to trigger the next steps, and that you can't fool it by simply copying the file to the correct location on the other drives. Which in turn makes me think its probably a proprietary client. If so, then do you know how it is configured? How does it get the number to dial, for example?

 

[KLin]

Procomm plus and zmodem FTW :-D

 

[rudeguy]

Yeah I've worked with Verifone before. No fun there. How do you do the download? What's the protocol and whose client are you using? I assume the download has to take place in order to trigger the next steps, and that you can't fool it by simply copying the file to the correct location on the other drives. Which in turn makes me think its probably a proprietary client. If so, then do you know how it is configured? How does it get the number to dial, for example?

The terminal dials in to epay. I program the number to dial, the program it looks for and some other basic information.

From what I have gathered, it's downloading the program that epay uses to process transactions. That program seems to be pretty basic. The machine gets authorized later on in the process so in my mind I should just be able to copy and upload that program. Then input the specifics for each machine.

 

[rudeguy]

On my way in to work. I've got a couple ideas to try out

 

[KB]

Try an installer program like Orca or InstallShield. They can see the "changes" you have made to a system during the install and bundle these into a redistributable package.

 

[Markbnj]

I was basically thinking: download the package once and then use a local machine to serve it to the others, but KB's idea might be the best approach.

 

[rudeguy]

Ended up figuring it out. The machines themselves have an upload feature but I was having issues figuring out the timing. Got it nailed down today and cranked out over 20 machines.

Not bad considering 10 was an accomplishment when I started.