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How Magnetic card reader works

Introduction

Magnetic card reader is a small device that are typically designed to read the digital data present on the rectangular shaped object called Magnetic .these cards have embed magnetic stripe and also available with the exterior. The popularity of these tiny memory devices increased the importance of the magnetic card readers. Magnetic card readers are capable of reading any kind of stored information such as ms word file. AVI and Mp3 files etc. All you need id to insert the magnetic card in the slot provided in the magnetic card reader .its an electronic device which gets active hen plugged with the provided port in the CPU of the computer. Magnetic card readers are now available with different characteristics according to the specification of the data such as memory cards for digital Cameras, Mobile memory cards.

Working of Magnetic Card Reader - How magnetic card reader works
The working of the magnetic card reader is quite simple they make use of the particular component to read the stored information in the magnetic memory cards. This component is known as read head .Basically card reader is the device which uses microcontroller technology in its construction. This read head have line drivers and amplifier for handling the signal frequency while reading the data. All the recent magnetic card readers have the F/2F bit circuits installed for recovery which is responsible for tracking the every bit of the data stored in the memory card in the form of bytes. The interface to this device is provided by the host controller. Advance coding techniques and efficient sampling for the drivers can be effective to make the reading process successful. The data is stored in the form of tracks in the cards. Specifically card has two r three tracks with different bit and character specification. Card reader mostly has the capability to red first and second tracks simultaneously .some of the latest version can read three of them at a time. Linear and sequential data reading is performed as required by the user.

After head the other component is the oscillator which is responsible for handling the clocks and timers for the recovery of the data. it decides hen to enable and disable the timers and prompt the user that data retrieval ahs been completed. Every single bit is recovered individually and is assigned specific period by the timer which is headed by the oscillator. the magnetic card readers reads data in forward direction which is also considered as the drawback of these wonderful devices because sometimes it takes time to recover all the data.

Data Storage in magnetic cards.
Data is always present in the bytes on three provided tracks of magnetic memory cards. 64 bit data character set is used for each track first track ha the highest density of data storage and it come first when magnetic card reader reads the data. Approximately 210 bit per inch is the average density for the first track. Second track has comparatively lower density usually of 75 to 210 bpi. All the tracks has the encoding format which grants the least significant bit and the parity bit at last to show the on and off state of the card.

Advantages of Magnetic card reader

Easy to carry .Small in size
Can read tons of data stored in memory cards
No individual slots required. It is easily fixable in the USB slot and also has multiple card slots on them for variant magnetic cards.
They are capable of reading almost all the formats of the data like documents,mp3,exe, audio/video files, avi etc.