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- From: tmkk@uiuc.edu (Khan)
- Newsgroups: sci.electronics
- Subject: Re: Magnetic Swipe Reader Decoders
- Message-ID: <BxIItM.A2E@news.cso.uiuc.edu>
- Date: 10 Nov 92 18:17:45 GMT
- Article-I.D.: news.BxIItM.A2E
- References: <kwRVTB1w165w@halcyon.com>
- Sender: usenet@news.cso.uiuc.edu (Net Noise owner)
- Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
- Lines: 30
-
-
- In article <kwRVTB1w165w@halcyon.com> daniel r. mauch <daniel@halcyon.com> writes:
- > Magnetic Card Swipe Reader
- >
- > Some time ago there were several posts about Magnetic Card
- >Readers and how to read the data. One of the files even had a C
- >program called Swipe.C that would read the data when a card was
- >pushed thought the reader and could be displayed on screen or
- >saved to a file.
- >
- > A few weeks ago, I bought a SR&D mag card swipe reader in
- >San Diego for $2.50. Using the information in the files posts
- >dating back to Jan 92 , I was able to connect my swipe reader to
- >my PC and using the program could read and store the contents of
- >the card. The problem was that the data was a columnar listing of
- >255's and 191's. I have deduced that the 255 is FF hex or 1111
- >1111. The 191 is BF hex or 1011 1111. Since I am not a
- >experienced programmer, I need some help in determining how to
- >read the data.
-
- What you're seeing is a raw dump of the data from the card reader.
- Only one or two bit positions in each byte are significant (bit 6 for
- sure, and probably one other - one for clock and one for data and
- perhaps a third for card detected). You need to do a bit of work to
- "digest" this raw data stream into meaningful data.
-
- You say that you are not an experienced programmer; this is by no means
- a "beginner" level task, so you may want to get someone with more
- experience to sit down with you and play around. This will be really
- tough to do over the net. ;-)
-