What sells movie tickets, cashes checks, lets you add minutes to your cell-phone account, and spits out a stack of crisp twenties? It's your neighborhood ATM-now equipped with a new computer that's more like a multimedia PC than the familiar dumb bank terminal.

Since the 1980s, most ATMs have been built around simple, slow computers with low-bandwidth telephone connections back to the bank. But a new generation of ATMs from companies such as Diebold of North Canton, OH, and Triton of Long Beach, MS, have fast, updated processors, a Microsoft Windows operating system, and quicker network connections based on the same protocols used on the Internet. That means they can handle complicated software for cashing checks, making money transfers, or displaying graphics as varied as any found on the Web.