These are screenshots of a demo disk produced for the retail automation system at Jeffries.

The retail system runs on the shop tills (PCs) and at the base. The base includes an integrated accounting system, which isn't shown in this demo.

The system runs in DOS, and was built with FoxBase (originally in dBaseIII+). The screenshots are dated September 10th, 1989; at that time it was complete, and operational in the three Jeffries shops (on 80286 Olivetti PCs). At end-of-day, the tills dial up to the base, upload sales information, synchronize the order table, stock table and customer list, and exchange any "email" messages (this is all controlled with some CrossTalk scripts). As of 2002, I believe it's still running. Visit the shops to check.



Click the images to move forward.
Some especially cute things to notice:

• A generic windowing system, with nicely overlapping windows... and popups... and scrollable listboxes...
• A full-featured wordprocessor, including mailmerge...

Other things you can't really see: multi-level access control, an inter-branch email system, lots of reporting, lots of online help...

(The screenshots here were taken with the wrong codepage setting, so some of the borders turned into accented characters)
You can download the original demo disk (zipped) here (you'll need DOS with ANSI.SYS to run it).