Re: Direct connect mag stripe reader

Mike,

It depends upon what the device is running. I use timeclocks from Icontime and basically it runs Busybox (a very lightweight Linux distro) http://www.icontime.com/index.php/products/automated-time-clocks/universal-time-clocks/rtc-1000-2-0-universal-time-clock. I have a Java servlet on IBM i that goes out and polls the the clocks and retrieves the data using a CGI program (so basically each clock has a tiny web server). The CGI "program" is just a bash script. It's all pretty easy.

So the first question would be how to query the device (it is a little vague about it). It *might*even be running something like Busybox. At that point, I could even share the scripts I use.

Pete Helgren
www.petesworkshop.com
GIAC Secure Software Programmer-Java

On 8/22/2013 9:38 PM, Mike Cunningham wrote:

Does anyone know of a way to direct connect an iSeries to a magnetic stripe card reader?

I found this device but it does not go into much detail on how to talk to it. Would I be able to use the sockets API to talk to this type of device?
http://www.computerwise.com/ethernet/ep310.html#terminal_emulation

I really do not want to get into having a windows system setup to collect the data and then try to get that up to the iSeries. I have used 5250 connected time clocks but that is a bit overkill for my need. Which is to just let students swipe a card to clock in/out of a location.

Or something a little more robust http://www.computerwise.com/time/ec305.htm and use F1 to clockin and F2 for clockout. This one would store internally and the FTP client in the iSeries could pull the data.