User guide

1
SECTION 1. FEATURES AND SPECIFICATIONS
The USB (Universal Serial Bus), HID Keyboard Emulation, Swipe Reader is a compact
magnetic stripe card reader, which conforms to ISO standards. The Reader is compatible with
the PC series of personal computers and emulates the operation of a keyboard. A card is read by
sliding it past the head either forward or backward.
The reader emulates a USB Human Interface Device (HID) United States keyboard or optionally
all international keyboards using ALT ASCII code keypad key combinations. This allows host
applications designed to acquire card data from keyboard input to seamlessly acquire the card
data from the USB swipe reader.
Caution
If another keyboard is connected to the same host as this device and a
key is pressed on the other keyboard while this device is transmitting,
then the data transmitted by this device may get corrupted.
Because of potential "data interleave" issues associated with the USB Keyboard interface,
MagTek recommends that the USB Keyboard Emulation MSR product should only be used if the
application requires magnetic stripe data to be provided via the keyboard input. If previous
applications were based upon RS-232 serial interface MSR's, or if this is a brand new
development effort, it is strongly recommended that you use the MagTek's USB IntelliHead
product. Please refer to Technical Manual 99875320 for further information regarding the USB
IntelliHead.
FEATURES
Major features of the Swipe Reader are as follows:
• Powered through the USB – no external power supply required
• Hardware Compatible with PC or any computer or terminal with a USB interface
• Bidirectional card reading
• Reads encoded data that meets ANSI/ISO/AAMVA standards and others such as ISO track 1
format on track 2 or 3.
• Reads up to three tracks of card data
• Compatible with USB specification Revision 1.1
• Compatible with HID specification Version 1.1
• Can use standard Windows HID drivers for communications. No third part device driver is
required.
• Many programmable configuration options
• Non-volatile flash EEPROM memory for configuration storage
HARDWARE CONFIGURATIONS