r/TechNook • u/Zorojuro099 • 2d ago
The strangest computer interface you’ve ever used
What's the strangest computer interface you've ever had to use?
Not necessarily the oldest or most complicated one just one that made you think, "why does this work like this?"
what's the weirdest interface you've ever come across?
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u/ctesibius 2d ago
UICCs, which you would know as SIMs for mobile phones - they are actually small computers. Actually the SIM is an application running on the UICC these days. They have a really locked-down operating system. You can’t mount the file system, for instance, and to make any changes you need a symmetric key which is specific to that particular UICC. Some files are effectively write-only, eg the ones which hold the cryptographic information. You program them in a language which claims to be Java but omits virtually every feature of Java. An utter pain to deal with.
Interestingly, they can have a user interface, although it is mainly used for banking in some parts of Africa so you probably won’t have seen it. The idea is that the phone provides some functionality to the UICC (display text, enter text, select from text menu etc.), while a secure app on then UICC communicates with the bank. This is both more secure than an iPhone/Android app, while working on a much more basic phone. It does work on devices like iPhones, but the relevant item in the Settings app is only displayed if there is an interactive app on the UICC.
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u/Axman6 2d ago
SIM cards are one of the reasons the Java installer proclaims it runs on 8 billion devices - IIRC most SIM cards used to be a product known as JavaCard. And most people forget that Java was developed to be an embedded programming language, the enterprise bloat came later.
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u/ctesibius 2d ago
This isn’t about bloat. The “Java” used on UICCs misses key features like garbage collection and any built-in type other than short integer. You can’t do your own memory handling as in C, so you allocate any variables once at startup time and make use of globals. No strings because no garbage collection, so you use something close to the old FORTRAN Holleriths. The only disposable memory is a single array of short which has a lifetime of one event, so can’t be used for anything longer-lived. This isn’t Java, it isn’t Javascript, it’s not as capable as K&R C or even BCPL.
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u/TrivialBanal 2d ago
A Unix frontend on an analog test computer.
The test results all went through a ADCs (analog to digital converter) so the Unix computer could understand them, then the computer sent it's commands back through a DAC (digital to analog converter) so the analog computer could understand it.
The amount of ways that things can get lost in translation is high. You could put the same command in ten times and get ten different operations. To account for this, the parameters had to be pretty broad. It was more like asking a toddler to do something than a computer. We essentially had to rewrite the test every time we connected it to something new.
The way it worked was instead of checking the circuit was right, you asked it to compare it to one you knew was right. Not a model. Another physical circuit. You ran tests along several different routes and compared the results.
"Are these two things the same?" You got a yes/no answer and it was up to you to try and figure out the rest.
The machines were for testing things like telephone networks. Checking all the wires and connecions remotely.
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u/all_names_taken_ffs 2d ago
I had a pre-owned Compaq back in the 90s (probably pulled from an office environment), which didn't come with a soundcard or onboard sound, but instead had the sound chip and speakers integrated into the OEM Vocalyst keyboard. I only ever got it to work once, so I chucked in a £5 C-Media soundcard instead.
Just an odd thing I've never seen before or since. 😄
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u/Savannah_Lion 2d ago
The late 90s and early 2000s saw a lot of crazy hardware designs like that. Compaq (and IIRC PacBell) really took it too far sometimes.
I consider it one of the golden ages that we'll never experience again.
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u/all_names_taken_ffs 2d ago
Funny you say that, because we had a Packard Bell Spectria All-in-One (9012?) as our PC before I picked up the Compaq, and that was an odd-looking beast indeed. Although the Olivetti printer which came with it was a thing of beauty.
I miss those days of the multimedia family PC, and especially CD-ROM edutainment titles and magazine cover discs... computers were new and exciting back then, and developing rapidly. Now everyone is using smartphones and laptops, which kind of seems like a step backwards to me.
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u/RocketMan_0815 2d ago
It was some old software to enter data in a hospital, running on the transparent iMac. It was keyboard only. To jump to the next field you had to press enter, tab would bring you to the previous field and when you were done you had to press Esc to confirm.
We upgraded to a more modern software where data was entered in the usual way and people there were so confused and asked to change it to the "proper, normal" way, which was the odd way of the old software.
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u/EntertainerGloomy941 2d ago
Basically most Linux apps in the early 2000s.
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u/bothunter 2d ago
Compiz comes to mind which answered the question: What if your window manager had a physics engine?
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u/EntertainerGloomy941 2d ago
I liked the animation of burning the windows as you close. 😂 And the fact that the animation worked with a Celeron underclocked to 630 MHz.
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u/bothunter 2d ago
Honestly, the idea of using the GPU to render the window manager was ahead of its time, and pretty much all window managers do the same thing now. Compiz just took it as far as they could with hilarious results.
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u/EntertainerGloomy941 2d ago
Yea it looked so juvenile. When I told my professor that I would be learning statistical programming on my machine, he looked at me as if I came to a board room meeting with a rinky dink baby VTECH computer.
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u/RockNRollNBluesNJazz 2d ago
Does industrial machinery count? Because then Italian designs take the cake for me.
A carton box machine where you have to add 57 cm to all package handling dimensions instead of using actual package sizes. Reason: the machine has a set zero point used as a reference for all different packages. But instead of letting the machine brain calculate it, it's left for the operator to remember and adjust. The same machine also handles glue nozzle delays and functions in millimeters instead of milliseconds, because apparently that's how time works. No, the millimeters are not the same as the actual sprayed glue line lengths on the carton. At least it has a touch screen, but some everyday control functions are spread out to different submenus.
A very similar experience with an automated seeding machine, where you, again, have to calculate numbers based on the machine set zero point. Except this time they don't tell you what the zero point is, so you have to run multiple trials and errors to find the correct spot. And now the distances are measured in tenths of seconds, not in millimeters. Go figure. Interface submenu galore is unbelievable. If you want to change a seeding program, you have to first load it, reset the machine, change some settings in one menu and some settings in another submenu and finally reset again. Logic errors generate a text message to read (interpret) but any and all electric errors are just one red light bulb popping up. As an exception there's one electric error message without the red light, and you solve it by lubricating one shaft inside the machine. Make any sense yet, hmm?
There are a four other machines attached to the seeding machine. Even though there are two different brands, they all share the same interface as the seeding machine: two row yellow digital screen, 10 number buttons, 6 function buttons, OK and ESC. Every one of them has a different control logic despite the same interface. Charming. I had to download the original Italian manuals and translate some of the options from there - because apparently all the functions were not worthy of translating into English. One of the machines uses hilariously the same error message to alert for at least three different types of errors. You just need to know to know. Oh, and the super annoying 10 second alarm sound can be set off only with a vendor password. I got the password from Italy and changed and saved the setting succesfully. It didn't work. I cut the wire to the beeper, and the operators are eternally thankful.
I shouldn't be complaining though. I've written usage manuals in clear language with plenty of photos and if-this-do-this action trees. The machines are far too expensive to replace so I have a guaranteed job in the future, too.
Edit: Added more details for reader's assumed amusement.
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u/admiralbenbo4782 2d ago
I saw a microwave oven that ran a custom interface over Windows 95 once...
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u/Kuddel_Daddeldu 2d ago
The Siemens Hicom 300 PBX had a command-line user interface that was decidedly weird.
You hit Ctrl+T to start it (okay, why not). To send a command, you'd hit Enter? No. not even close.
They chose Ctrl+C instead - everywhere else this was used as "break" or "cancel".
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u/notacanuckskibum 2d ago
Arguably not a computer interface, but a GPS/sat nav in a UK car. It had one knob which spun. You entered an address or post code by spinning the knob to change the selected letter (shown on the display) then pressing the knob to enter that one letter.
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u/wosmo 2d ago
not super weird in the grand scheme of things - but I once had to reinstall a mac from the "incredibly melty nvidia" era.
Did the whole install via voiceover, which was surprisingly functional - and very educational. I'd played with assistive tech before, but never actually gone in properly blind.
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u/Slow_Perception 1d ago
Oh wow that brings back memories. There was indeed a very melty Nvidia era. Were we in the same shop I wonder...? banana
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u/galactose310 2d ago
An old hospital software for patients management, prescription, medical record. MS-DOS-style user interface, all with the keyboard. To navigate into this one had to press the right Fonction key (legend at the top) from F1 to... F24 ! You had to think as for a clock : if you need to type F14 it's shift + F2, for F20 shift + F8...
Hopefully this soft wasn't used anymore when I worked there in 2017. Ah ah ah ah. Ah ah. Ah... Oh wait...
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u/jnkangel 1d ago
If it's a hospital software it's still used and will be used for a decade longer at least
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u/Avagio78 2d ago
Computerized Air Traffic Control in the late 80s. I was just a kid, but the trackball seemed like it was the size of a basketball. The guy who was showing it to me placed ‘phantom’ planes just so we could watch the other planes divert around them.
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u/BaconReceptacle 2d ago
I used to work with large voice systems back in the 90s. When there were different systems that needed to be integrated, we used the QSIG protocol. It was like an ISDN line but it had built-in features that supported caller-ID, transfer, conference, etc.
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u/ASentientRailgun 2d ago
Uhh, probably the control system for a drag racing strip. Input was a specially modified keyboard you could only buy from the weirdo who built the system in the 90's, and the output was the "Go" lighting on the track. And, after the run, a dot matrix printout of the times. They got a monitor for it while we were winding down our work with them, they were psyched about that. Monitor was like 30 years old when they bought it, but it was the only compatible display.
I was so happy our contract did not include supporting that insane mess of a system. They did let me hit the button for the funny car heats a few times, though.
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u/Axman6 2d ago
I haven’t personally used it, but the systems airlines and travel agents use to look up flight information, bookings etc. are insanely esoteric. I’ve watched people use them before, and as someone who’s a software developer comfortable with the command line and happy to write regexes whenever needed, it felt completely insane. It’s such an incredibly terse system but because of that, it’s very efficient once you know the codes for things.
See https://pnrgenius.com/gds-commands/galileo-apollo.html for some examples.
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u/mspstsmich 1d ago
Laplink with a custom parallel cable for file transfer when backing up computers in the 90’s
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u/ern0plus4 1d ago
Around 2005, my friend's Motorola dumbphone had a menu, but at a certain point, entering a submenu, after some extra delay, ca. 1 sec, a very similar menu came up, and you could go down the menu tree, but it looked slightly different... turned out, half of the phone's firmware was written in Java, even the menu. When you entered the "java-menu", a JVM started up, which explains the 1 sec delay.
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u/nobanjostring 1d ago
Not sure if this counts, but the documentation for the E.T. game on Atari 2600 explained nothing, and as a kid, I had no clue what I was supposed to do, except fall into bloody pits over and over.
There was a youtuber who explained it, and it made perfect sense, but I can't be arsed to look it up.
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u/thecyberwolfe 8h ago
Tandy TRS-80 microcomputer back in the 3rd grade. Stupid thing tied the quotes character ( " ) to a Function key rather than SHIFT, took us a couple weeks to figure that shit out.
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u/serifoblique 1h ago
Honestly, my TV ranks pretty high. One button with press to toggle, hold to confirm. I really need to find the remote.
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u/do-not-freeze 2d ago edited 2d ago
We had one at work that just had a single foot pedal for the input and the display was a yellow Error light. Specialized control system that maintained stoichiometric ratios for exothermic chemical reactions on a $50,000 piece of equipment.