StoreMaster Development History
Quite a few of you have asked where this software came from
and how long it's been around. We wrote this to answer those
questions.
In the Beginning
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Development of The StoreMaster System goes back to 1981,
beginning with CP/M machines running Dbase II and Turbo
Pascal.
One of SCR's founders, Carol, was consulting with a client who was using a Cromemco CROMIX machine in his warehouse/office, to track inventory for six stores. He had originally purchased the system with a COBOL accounting package that was probably okay for a very large direct sales business with a limited product line, but it was absolutely useless for him. She was looking for an alternative.
Another SCR founder, Leo, was a partner in a Real-Time Process Control business, working primarily in FORTRAN and ASSEMBLER, on chemical and power plant control systems. They had been using small, inexpensive, powerful Intel processors as components in Process Control systems, and had been following the development from the 4004 CPU's up to the 8080's, and the advent of a very real operating system, CP/M. They had done some dBase II systems for clients' Engineering departments to track equipment, instruments, and wiring connections during installations, instead of using mainframe software. These had proven to be so successful and cost effective that Leo recommended dBase II as a development platform for an Inventory Tracking system, and Carol went ahead with it.
A few months later, the client, although happy with the way the system worked, asked if there were any cash registers that could capture the sales data on a floppy disk, since it was taking almost one full-time person in the warehouse to enter the daily sales receipt data from all six stores into the Inventory system - and, of course, there were the inevitable unreadable receipts and keying errors, so that the wrong items got "sold" or the right items got "sold" for the wrong price.
A review of the equipment available found only a few Electronic Cash Registers, known as ECR's. They were expensive ($10K-$15K), and they didn't capture all of the data that was needed.
But while talking with both the manufacturers and local business machine people, Leo discovered that for a few hundred bucks you could get a cash drawer that could be hooked to your micro-computer's serial port, and pop the drawer open whenever you wanted.
When the client, predictably, decided not to spend a hundred grand or so on cash registers, Leo suggested that he might want to consider developing software for a micro-computer that would use one of those cash drawers along with an inexpensive printer, and create a computerized cash register that would capture everything he needed for around half of the cost of the ECR's.
And so it began.
Early Days
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The first versions worked pretty well, but of course,
running on a Z80 or 8080 Microcomputer with two floppy disk
drives, using dBase II (which only allowed two data files
open at once - who could possibly need more than TWO?), was
just a tad bit slow...
We tried the first of the dBase "compilers", but, unfortunately it got slower instead of faster. The tech guy we talked to said something like "Oh, you're doing arithmetic!" and we said, "Well, duhhhhh, arithmetic, fancy that, how stupid of us."
We were looking for something that would allow a fairly close and easy conversion of our dBase II code, and the only thing that looked like a candidate was Turbo Pascal. The best part was that not only was the language structured very similarly, but it appeared that it would be possible to use the actual dBase II data files and index files.
We called Ashton-Tate and asked for information about the structure of the files, and were told that it was "proprietary information". I told them that I was fairly used to dealing with such things, having a number of non-disclosure agreements in force, with folks like General Electric, DEC, Texaco, Gulf, and so on. They were not impressed, and flatly refused to divulge anything. So we rolled up our sleeves and started taking the files apart, coding, and testing.
As far as we know, we were the first people anywhere to read and write dBase files with another language, and once we got that done, the Turbo Pascal version worked like a champ - plenty quick, and using the dBase files directly.
Instead of taking a pile of receipts from the stores back to the warehouse, the client was taking a single floppy disk; instead of spending a couple of hours per store to key in all the sales, he was spending about three minutes to read each store's disk into the sales data file.
We did a few more installations, kind of as a side line, and tried to see if we couldn't sell the software to one of the big cash register companies. IBM had come out with the machine that changed the word "micro-computer" to "Personal Computer", and others were starting to follow suit. We contacted IBM, NCR, Sharp, and every other outfit we could find, and they all said basically the same two things: (1) "computers and cash registers are two different divisions with nothing in common, so there's no point in talking to us about this"; (2) "even if we were interested in something like this, there will never be a market for PC-based cash registers."
IBM Legitimizes the Micro-computer
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The micro-computer world of the late 70's and early 80's was
a mish-mash of products struggling to make a market. There
were over 1,100 companies putting their brand names on one
sort of little computer or another. Probably the worst
aspect was that there was essentially no standardization of
any sort, other than the pervasive (95%) use of the CP/M
operating system: no two keyboards alike, no two video
displays alike, diskette formats so different that data
written on one brand of computer could not be read on any
other brand without the use of special translation
software...
And then IBM changed things completely. By declaring that micro-computers were "real", by coming out with their own model, and by coining the name "Personal Computer", soon to become the generic "PC".
Managers in American businesses, particularly large businesses, seemingly have always subscribed to the axiom "No one ever got fired for buying IBM." And so it quickly became a wise decision to begin buying PC's for business use.
In a couple of years, PC's were on business desks everywhere. Xerox got into the game, along with other big-name business equipment companies. The hundreds of little micro-computer companies disappeared. And the de-facto standardization imposed by IBM opened the market to Pacific Rim companies that finally had a market big enough to support their manufacturing capabilities, which the one-of-a-kind micro-computers never did.
Suddenly, seemingly overnight, PC's were OK.
The Birth of SCR
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Along with the explosion of PC hardware came an explosion of
PC software. Ashton-Tate brought out dBASE III, and a
company called Nantucket came out with a "real" compiler,
called CLIPPER, for dBASE programs, which made them
smaller, faster, and much easier to distribute.
So we decided to sell our Cash Register software, along with the various pieces of "warehouse" and "office" software that went with it.
As the SCR System, which includes our own modified SBT
Accounting Series, it has been on the market since 1986,
with more than 5000 users in businesses ranging from antique
stores to zoo concession stands.
YES - WE DO CUSTOMIZATION and YES - WE CAN INSTALL SYSTEMS
StoreMaster Design Philosophy
Our basic design philosophy is to provide a fast, easy-to-use system with absolutely standard parts. This means standard SOFTWARE as well as standard HARDWARE.
Standard Software: The StoreMaster System is written in the Clipper Xbase language, and uses xBase data files (xBase is the generic term for data files and software compatible with dBase(TM)). This provides data in a completely open architecture, which means that you can access it with hundreds of existing software packages: you can extract new information in the form of reports, graphs, pictures, etc., and you can readily interchange data with still more existing software packages, such as Lotus, Quattro, and Paradox, because xBase is the world's most widely-used data file structure.
The index files for the data files are compatible with the FoxPro compound/compact index structure, providing fast access while maintaining small size.
Standard Hardware: The StoreMaster System uses completely standard PC hardware. It can be used on any PC system that is "IBM-compatible." That means true IBMs, COMPAQs, "clones" - anything at all!
You will also find a huge variety of POS-specific equipment, such as cash drawers, receipt printers, bar code scanners, and the like - all compatible with standard PC's, and all compatible with The StoreMaster System.
We strongly suggest that you choose a local dealer whom you know personally or who is highly recommended by business acquaintances. It is true that many mail-order computer houses sell excellent products at good prices, but they generally cannot provide the kind of support you may require. We will be happy to provide you with complete specifications for all required hardware and software components, and you can purchase any desired POS HARDWARE such as Cash Drawers, Receipt Printers, Bar Code Scanners, Scales, etc., either from us or direct from the vendors.