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Card reader

Hello to all.

I'd like to ask your help about a card readr I recently found in my garage...let me say that I'm not an expert in electronics: I'm able to solder but I don't have a great experience in building circuits.

I found a magstripe card reader: it is a Magtek 210450002. It has 5 wires coming out from him (got from docs at

formatting link

1 VCC 2 GRND 3 DATA 4 STROBE 5 CLOCK/CARD PRESENT

I was wondering if it would be possible to connect it to a DB9 serial port (to connect it to a PC). I found several projects around to connect it to a DB15 game port, but nothing for the serial port. May be this is telling me that this is not possible....but I have here also a MAX232 connector...may be that the connection with this will allow this serial connection? My MAX232 has 6 pins:

1 VCC 2 GRND 3 Rx 4 Tx 5 RTDS 6 CTDT

I have two questions:

- do you think it is possible to connect this magtek to a serial port?

- if so, which pin should I connect between card reader and MAX232? It is easy for VCC, GRND and DATA, but I have no idea about the others....

Thanks to all of you.

Regards, Clip

Reply to
b38911
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The format of this data is unsuitable for connection to the serial port in what you think of as the standard fashion.

Strobe is a clock; on either the rising or falling edge (I forget which it is in the Magtek parts), you sample "data"; if it's low, you have a

0; if it's high, you have a 1. Card present you can ignore for now.

You can connect this to the serial port by putting both strobe and data on two of the status lines, polling as fast as possible, and decoding the data in your own software.

Reply to
Terran Melconian

....thank you for your suggestions...I'll try to work on this.... Clip

Reply to
b38911

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