No small change for cash registers.

• Position: Pete Catoe develops software that lets cash registers talk to microcomputers

Imagine a reasonably priced cash register that not only remembers what things cost but also what they were, how long they've been on the shelf and who sold them.

That's what Pete Catoe envisioned while working as a computer installer for retailers. So two years ago, the 25-year-old Charlotte resident sat down and in his spare time wrote software that lets cash registers talk to PCs. Now the resulting system is ringing up sales for Catoe's ECR Software and cash-register dealers.

"We can't build the machines fast enough to get them out," says Jeffrey S. King, sales manager at Cash Register Systems, the Charlotte-based company that helped Catoe put it all together into a salable package.

At the center of the system is a conventional cash register beefed up with extra function keys and additional memory. Clerks either scan the item's label or enter a code from it. This records information such as the product's price, arrival date, color or size. The register also tracks which department the item came from and who rang it up.

Periodically, the register transfers all this information to a PC. "With this system, a small retail chain store can have one PC at its headquarters or warehouse with up to 14 registers at various...