Magnetic Card Reader Help

[rootx11]

I just bought 2 magnetic card readers. I got them from the site
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=367&type=store

The models which I purchased are the MCR-7 and the MCR-10.

I have a few questions.

First, is there any documentation out there on how magnetic card
readers work? Any kind of documentation would be helpful, preferably
on the way data is encoded on to the card itself, what kind of ASCII
characters are read off of the card, and the like.

Second, is there any existing software out there? These hook up to a
RJ-11 jack (stnadard modem) If there is no existing software, or no
one knows of any, I will be running on Unix (FreeBSD to be specific)
and am going to read() off of the modem serial device file itself.
Does anyone have any experience in that, or could give me a heads up?
Anything would be appreciated.

Please reply to rootx11@arbornet.org or khanf@mail.com

Thanks a lot

- Farhan

 

In sci.electronics.equipment rootx11 <rootx11@arbornet.org> wrote:

First, is there any documentation out there on how magnetic card
readers work?

http://www.repairfaq.org/filipg/LINK/F_cardreader.html , and the
Phrack article linked at the bottom.

Second, is there any existing software out there?

See above page. You'll probably have more luck with the MCR-7;
it's probably just the card reader, and maybe an RS232 interface.

These hook up to a RJ-11 jack (stnadard modem)

The MCR-7 has an RJ-11 plug, but it is incredibly unlikely that it
emulates an analog telephone line (and therefore plugging it into
a modem is going to be rather useless). It is somewhat likely that
it is an RS232 serial interface, and you will be able to plug it
into the serial port. But it is highly likely to just be a couple
of discrete logic lines (clock, data, maybe "card present").

Please reply to rootx11@arbornet.org or khanf@mail.com

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html#noprivate

Matt Roberds

 

[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

rootx11@arbornet.org (rootx11) writes:

I just bought 2 magnetic card readers. I got them from the site
http://www.allelectronics.com/cgi-bin/category.cgi?category=367&type=store

The models which I purchased are the MCR-7 and the MCR-10.

I have a few questions.

First, is there any documentation out there on how magnetic card
readers work? Any kind of documentation would be helpful, preferably
on the way data is encoded on to the card itself, what kind of ASCII
characters are read off of the card, and the like.

You find quite much information on this topic at
http://www.epanorama.net/links/smartcards.html#magneticcard

--
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at
http://www.epanorama.net/