Mindware Magnetic Card Reader

This is a simple three track magnetic card reader with serial output. This reader connects to your computer with a DB9 for serial and a PS/2 for power and outputs a 9600bps 8N1 ASCII serial stream. Plug the reader into a serial port (or USB to serial converter), swipe your frequent shopper card, and you?ll see the account number plain and unencrypted on the screen. We couldn?t find a card the reader couldn?t read. No drivers needed. No software needed. Just pure, wonderful serial.

A magnetic card is a rectangular plastic object (think credit/debit card) that contains either a magnetic object embedded within the card or a magnetic stripe on the exterior of the card. A magnetic card can store any form of digital data. The electronic devices designed to read stored information from a magnetic card do so by either swiping the card through a slot in the reading device or holding the card next to a magnetic card reader. About a hundred bytes of information can be stored on a magnetic card. The magnetic card reader is a microcontroller-based device and has been programmed for a specific application. That program simply reads the card in a forward direction in a simple data format or it can be complex enough to read the card in any direction with a corresponding encoding format.The reader also contains an oscillator section which is used to provide the clocks for the recovery section and for the enable/disable timers. The enable/disable counters provide initialization for the recovery section. The recovery section locks onto the data rate and recovers the individual data bits from the data stream.

We offer different types of slot readers that are used to read barcodes and magnetic strips. Our Magnetic card readers are very much functional in reading ID cards, membership cards, loyalty cards, credit cards etc. These slot readers can be connected to any PC through USB port.
Features:
•    Magnetic stripe readers read drivers licenses, credit cards and other information encoded in the magnetic strips
•    Combo readers can read both bar code and magnetic stripe media
•    Programmable internal decoder and interface.
•    Use on any PC with a USB port or a PS/2, PC/AT or Macintosh keyboard connection
•    Designed for high volume traffic and are very durable