Can you see the message on the screen of our credit-card machine? I’m sure some of you have had the pleasure. It says “waiting on net” and then the word “fatal.” Not a good message.
For the past week at MIT, we didn’t have a credit card machine. When the machine returned Thursday, it made one transaction and died. Friday we got it fixed, and maybe twenty of you were able to pay with cards. Then, while one of you was paying for lunch around 2:30, it reverted to its favorite message: “waiting on net,” and died.
These machines work on pager networks, and the networks around MIT aren’t very good. Back at the kitchen, the machine connected to the network just fine.