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electronics
USB logic analyzer
digital power audio amp
cheap magnetic card reader
yet another theremin (fr)
electronic tubes (en+fr)
software
freshtel driver
PictoSniff (en/fr)
Madrigal
hacking the Inventel Livebox
Opie on the Nokia 770
framebuffer consoles and boot menu for the N770
misc. software
ti89 projects
IR messenger
kDriver
Lua89
reading SPI memories (fr)
inside electronics
alcatel webtouch easy
isiconnect set-top boxes
photos of an old IBM hard disk
plasma globe (en/fr)
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chemistry !
making biodiesel
links
some links
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The iron filings trick
Putting iron filings on the magnetic stripe and then tapping the card gently on a hard surface really works :
The individual bits are even becoming to be visible, but my iron filings were a bit too coarse. However, the position of the magnetic track(s) is
cleary defined. Here, with an ALISE card, theres just one track (which is, by the way, a fairly standard ABA 2). With a Mozaic Mastercard, there
are two such tracks visible.
Magnetic card reader
There are several software programs over the Web to decode magnetic cards using a computer sound card. But some websites will tell you that you
can just connect a cassette players magnetic head directly to the microphone input of your PC, others will tell you that you do need a magnetic
head designed for card readers, etc...
Ive managed to build a working card reader using a magnetic head scavenged from a mono cassette player (I dont know if stereo heads work, they
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should in theory) and a few other parts that amplify the signal from the head - the head did not give enough power to directly drive the input of the
soundcard.
As you can see, all the parts are very common, and can probably be found in the cassette player you will scavenge the magnetic head from. Most
NPN transistors are suitable, I used a 2N2219 because I had one available but theres no need for such a powerful transistor.
The circuit uses "phantom power" from the soundcard: the microphone input provides a direct voltage of about 2.5V with an internal resistance of
1k. The 15k resistor and the 100uF capacitor filter out the alternative component of the signal, to provide a stable polarization voltage to the
transistor. The transistor is polarized through the 120k resistor - you may want to fit this value to your particular transistor in order to get a
reasonable voltage drop on the microphone input (about -1V) when the circuit is connected. I am aware this circuit is "dirty" and has unstable gain
(which is not really a problem anyway, as you only read 0s and 1s), but it works, its easy to build, and its cheap.
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The construction is also one of the cheapest, using a CD cover to provide the plastic bits, a piece of cardboard to tune the position of the head (first,
determine coarsely where the magnetic track is using iron filings and put an appropriate thickness of cardboard, then, while swiping the card, adjust
the position of the head to get best results, finally, stabilize the cardboard with some hot glue. You can also preferably use a couple of screws
instead of the cardboard).
If you hear sound when you swipe the card, but the software fails to properly recognize the code, the magnetic head position is probably wrong. Its
very critical.
You can find a suitable software program here: http://www.gae.ucm.es/~padilla/extrawork/stripe.html.
2003-2008 Sbastien Bourdeauducq
Questions ? Comments ? Feel free to use the forums.
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