Magnetic Card Readers For Linux?

Squeezer asks: "I'm working at a state library which has a new building under construction. The staff wants the building to run Linux for everything due to its stability. Our plans include a magnetic card similar to a credit card that has a magnetic strip. When a patron swipes their card, depending on their location, it will either let them: enter the library, print out a catalog on a book, let them print out an article, allow them to make a copy, and so on. I have been doing research but I am unable to find any magnetic card readers that support Linux. Any Slashdot readers have any advice or recommendations for such devices?"

Comments

Welch Allyn.

[rasjani]

We are using Welch Allyn decoders. You can attach magnetic card reader or barcode reader to this decoder and it is attached to keyboard so it works on any platform. Not really sure if this kind of thing should work for you, if you want to have one at the door or somewhere that grants you access the fact that it attaches itself between keyboard and the computer. Other than that, they work really fine. I think we have been using Welch Allyn's hardware for allmost decade now without any kind of major problems. These beasts work in way that they first send a prefix character to notify the underlying program that data is incoming from reader not the keyboard (this can be disable ofcourse), then the actual data let it be barcode or magnetic card stripe and then suffix to let program know that transmission is over. The actual program doesnt have any special requirements because it still sees incoming sequence as human punched it except ofcourse, it should change to appropriate field (in our case) when it sees the prefix char in keyboard buffer so that rest of the buffer is entered into correct place.
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