@TMeantime Computer Consoles is celebrating a monster $16m contract Down Under, won for it by Alcatel STC Australia Pty. The Golden Casket Art Union, a privately held company that provides gaming services under government authority of the state of Queensland, has bought five Power 6/32FT fault-tolerant Unix machines as part of its total system solution – and it is in keeping with Queensland’s image as Australia’s cowboy state that the what is claimed will be the largest Unix system down under will be for gambling. Alcatel STC was picked over nine other vendors. When the systems are installed and the Queensland’s Gold Lotto gaming service is completed, we will have a system that is light years ahead of the rest of the gaming world, said Merv German, development manager for Golden Casket. The original software came from a European firm and was written in Fortran and Alcatel STC converted it into C for Unix. When the system becomes operational, magnetically-encoded plastic gaming cards will be issued to Lotto players. Players will then be able to enter a draw by simply passing the cards through one of 800 Swedish-built gaming terminals that will be located at local agencies across Queensland. Optical scanners and microprocessors in the terminals will record the player’s name, card number and game choices. These will be passed along highly secured telephone lines to the central computer. The terminal will then print a bar code on a ticket and issue it to the player as a receipt. The Queensland minister of finance, Brian Austin, is pleased too: Quicker bets, later entry deadlines and fewer headaches for agents, due to the reliability of the new system, should improve the popularity of the game and result in increased revenue for our state, he said.
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