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 [email protected] or [email protected]

Thanks a lot

- Farhan

 

[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

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