16 Mar
2013
16 Mar
'13
12:38 a.m.
ooohhh, the CueCat. one of the first pieces of hardware I ever physically
hacked in my life. Used a microprocessor, that read the barcode, paired it
with the serial EPROM on the board, and used the serial number and a
proprietary formula to jumble the barcode and spit it out over the keyboard
port to the software sitting on the computer, taking you to the website,
and recording your usage at the same time. People had such an issue with
this device recording everything they look at and tracking your interests
for sale to a third party. Yet, now, we use Google (while being
"Scroogled") religiously, use QR codes, check in places, hashtag things we
are interested in, etc. etc. without a second thought.
I liked how it was a simple wire (might have been more, cant remember?) and
elementary soldering skills, and you took the scanner from spitting garbage
to a simple barcode number over the PS/2 port. I actually used it back in
the day, printed an "ID card" with just a long random barcode, and set it
as my password and used it to log-in to windows. I've wanted to get a USB
cat for a while now, but they are fairly costly for my budget. As with
anything, I would need to buy a couple, so that I could keep one intact for
historical value, and hack the other for practicality.
On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 2:21 PM, Dave McGuire <mcguire at neurotica.com> wrote:
On 03/15/2013 05:58 AM, Joachim Thiemann wrote:
one method that I could think of would be like
some 80's magazines:
print barcodes onto letter paper. Use an old CueCat (the
proprietary-but-much-hacked not-so-free giveaway from Radio Shack) to
read the data back in.
There is no hardware other than what you are likely to already have
for the output side. If you don't have a CueCat, I'm sure a small
amount of components can be hacked together to make a barcode reader
in the "pen-drag" fashion.
I think I still have a few CueCats if anyone wants them, free for the
cost of shipping.
-Dave
--
Dave McGuire, AK4HZ
New Kensington, PA