2026 Retrocomputing Problem: Discover Area With A Credit score Card Reader

The humble bank card reader — most of us have used lots of, maybe even 1000’s of them through the years. But even for people like us, it’s not the kind of gadget we give plenty of thought to. It’s only a keypad, a show, and a magnetic stripe reader. How fascinating may it probably be?

That could also be true in some circumstances, however not less than for the Nineties-era TRANZ 330, there’s a bit extra to the story than that. As [CharlesD] explains, these explicit readers are basically full Z80 computer systems simply ready to do one thing extra thrilling than processing PINs. In the case of this explicit unit, the addition of a GPS module and a few new code has turned it into an interactive guide to the solar system.

Thanks to the UV erasable ROMs used within the TRANZ 330, loading new code on the gadget is simple sufficient. With a little bit of educated poking round, [CharlesD] was capable of map out what did what. Working from the fundamentals of getting the show and keypad working, he moved onto the serial interface, which in flip let him talk with a contemporary GPS module and era-appropriate thermal printer. From there it was only a matter of getting the maths carried out to compute the azimuth and elevation of a given planet, and he had an offline map of the photo voltaic system to be used together with his telescope.

This is a type of initiatives which is superior sufficient by itself deserves, nevertheless it’s significantly thrilling to see simply how straightforward it’s to repurpose certainly one of these card readers, particularly since [CharlesD] was type sufficient to share his supply code. If you find yourself choosing certainly one of these up and getting one thing operating on it, be sure to let us know.