How can Interface TTL magnetic card reader with printer port

card reader ttl

Hi All!
Actually I want to interface the TTL magnetic card reader with computer
I have tried it with stripe snoop using game port but it does not work out
the reader i m using is TYSSO TTL MCR series which reads data from track 2 with loco magnetic cards, now i want to interface it with parallel port, in the reader there is a decoder IC ET6106
which decode the magnetic head analog singnal to digital form which output three signals which are CARD PRESENT(/CLS) ,DATA(/RDP) & STROBE or CLOCK PULSE (/RCP).
How i will make these conncetions to printer port what language should
i use for this purpose.
Thanks,
ASIM RAUF

how to make magnetic card reader

Hi,
I cannot find any data on that device on the net. Interfacing it to a parallel port can be done if the computer has a hardware parallel port. I have successfully interfaced to the parallel port using a freeware impout32.dll that you can download from logix4u.
**broken link removed**
This will interface to the printer port using C or C++ under Windows XP, (I have not tried it with Vista yet and it probably won't work knowing how awkward Vista is with just about everything not written/compiled specifically for it !!). There are severeral references to it on this board including some sample code in a console based application that I wrote to interface directly to a stepper motor. You will have a bit more of a problem if you try using a PC without a hardware parallel port as the virtual parallel ports from a USB input are not so easy to work with as virtual serial (COM) ports are, I have not tried doing this yet.

Without a datasheet you will probably struggle to talk to the IC though. I guess that you will have to interface to the output datastream using the clock as a synchronising reference but how the data and clock are referenced without a datasheet to refer to is pure trial and error. Usually data on the dataoutput pin is valid at the rising edge of a clock pulse but there are exceptions to this.

I hope this helps

ttl reader

Below is the link for data sheet of the reader i am using

**broken link removed**

interface mag card reader

Hi,
Dr.Bob, incidentally , does Inpout32.dll works under Win XP?, I thought you need to specify absolute port address with this dll and WinXP does not allow that?
Regards,
Laktronics

et6106 datasheet

Hi laktronics,
Yes, it worked fine under XP the last time I used it, which was about a year ago. I have not tried it live with Vista yet although this OS did not complain when I ran the compiled code without the hardware attached about a month ago, just to try it out to see what would happen. You are right, it does require the port address but it accesses the port hardware the Windows preferred way, via a low level driver routine, just like a proper printer driver does. You can find some of my code elsewhere on this board (a simple console app.) that I used to drive what I call a CNC miter box This used the parallel port under XP to generate a clock for the stepper driver (a simple CMOS logic state machine feeding into FETs via an optically isolated interface. As well as setting the direction signal and reading back from optical sensors where the saw carriage was, it was designed to be used to cut guitar fingerboard fretwire slots, the program also calculates the position of the slots for the required fretboard length from keyboard input.
Regards
Bob.

magnetic card reader with printer

Hi,
That is really great Dr. Bob, thank you very much for the info.
With regards,
Laktronics.

magnetic ttl

Hi Asim,
Thanks for the datasheet url info, yes, it should be quite straight forward to interface to the parallel port, you need to set up a loop in your software that monitors the NACT signal, when this signal goes low the card is detected at the start of the read swipe, then monitor the NCLK1 clock line for a high to low transition, then read the data on DAT1 do this for as many data points as are pesent for the card you are reading (see the datasheet) or until the NACT signal goes high again. That should be quite easy using the parallel port as you suggest. It is important to use the NACT signal and the clock signal to synchronise the data. Note the data is not stored on the cards as 8-bit data on the card, so you will have to process the raw binary data when you have it read into an array with your sofftware.
Good luck
Bob.

configure game port for card reader

Better use a small microcontroller to get the data from the reader and sent it to the serial port.
Because when we swipe the card on one direction thrn you will get the Start character(11010) first and during reverse swipe you will get the LRC data.
If you want bi-directional data then its better do it with Microcontroller, i have done it with a 8051 microcontroller.

ttl card reader interface

Thanks for an idea i was also come to the same decision, you said you
have done it before with 8051 can you provide me the schematic.

how to interface with ttl card reader

Hi, saw this post on magnetic card readers and was hoping that you might help me out with a question.

I'm a retired software eng and have been fooling around with writing poker software programs for card rooms. I have already demo'd some of the software to a local room and one of the questions asked was whether or not I could build some tracking software where a player would swipe their card and track their time, among other things. I have, as of yet, not gotten any info from him regarding how to decode the track info from the IT dept yet.

My question is, how hard do you think it would be to decode by myself? Are there any programs that would help me out in this area?

Thanks
Glenn

i to working on the magnetic card reader using ttl logic like strobe pin output and data pin input to the processor, but i am working on the linux platform there i had written a driver for drive the stream of bits. here i have been drive the stream of data in the forward direction perfectly. but in case of reverse direction i didn't get the proper data. because may be my data interpretation was wrong. can any one suggest me how to processed from this point.


thanks in advance.