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In my first job as a Software Developer about 5 or 6 years ago I worked at a company which connected to forecourt controllers (which managed ATGs, fuel pumps, e
by alexcason 12y ago
In my first job as a Software Developer about 5 or 6 years ago I worked at a company which connected to forecourt controllers (which managed ATGs, fuel pumps, etc) on petrol forecourts in the UK, retrieved the data and presented it to a team of analysts for reporting back to the forecourt owners.
To this day, the most difficult software challenge I have had to tackle was to retrieve the data from the serial port of a controller called the DOMS 2000. It had been replaced a number of years earlier by a new model but was still in wide service.
We had very limited documentation and I spent weeks observing the data being transmitted from the serial port while performing actions using a simulator. Eventually I managed to reliably intercept and correctly interpret almost every command.
I believe, to this day, I may well be one of the foremost experts on the DOMS 2000 on the planet.
- saganus 12y agoWhat would you say was the biggest cause for this to be so difficult? is it "just because" you didn't have the proper documentation? or was the nature of the communication protocol itself hard due to its design? or was it perhaps the fact that both factors would compound terribly?
- profinger 12y agoWhile that sounds grueling, it sounds like a lot of fun!
- marvin 12y agoHave you capitalized on your unique DOMS 2000 knowledge in recent projects? If this is a widely-used controller which is involved in a lot of valuable business, it sounds like you could have a very good consulting gig here.