CD45 Overview

CD45 Integrated POS Network

A major problem with point-of-sale (POS) networks is the wide variety of POS equipment and cash register types encountered in the installed base. For example, the IBM 4683 and the NCR 2126 can only communicate with their own proprietary protocols and because of this limitation, new devices cannot easily be interfaced. Another problem that often arises is the lack of sufficient memory available on the cash register when implementing additional features. Furthermore, when adding new software to the cash register, there may be a high risk posed to its previous reliability.

The CD45 is an interface device designed specifically for the point-of-sale market. The main advantage of the CD45 is that it can add integrated debit/credit features to an existing cash register environment with only a minimal amount of change. Several thousand units across North America have been connected successfully to a variety of cash registers, all of which have utilized a wide spectrum of pinpads.

The CD45 is a device that can be connected in either a stand-alone or a LAN configuration. The CD45 has three ports - two RS-232 ports, and one high-speed RS-485 port. There is an 8-bit microcontroller and up to 128K of memory. The CD45 have externally accessible DIP switches, allowing for easy configuration in the field. In addition to the base code that resides in each CD45, Wann Connection Devices offers a development environment that allows the CD45 to be customized to your specifications. CD45 provides a wide area network interface.

When the CD45 is connected in a LAN configuration, one of the CD45's must be made into master. The slave CD45's on this LAN take information from electronic cash registers (ECR), establish a dialog with the pinpad, and then send the information to the bank for processing. The response from the bank host is then verified and sent to the ECR for receipt printing. Using the companion Wann 202T modem, the master can be easily interfaced into a Datapac 3201 packet-switching network. Other network interfaces are also available.

The CD45 may also be used when the cash register is already connected to a network which can route to the bank host. We refer to this as stand-alone configuration. In this configuration the CD45 is connected between the pinpad and the ECR. The ECR sends the "Totals" information to the CD45. The CD45 then gives the ECR the message to send to the bank and awaits a response. The response from the bank is then verified and formatted for display on the pinpad. Receipt information is returned to the ECR for printing.