The humble credit card reader — most of us have used hundreds, perhaps even thousands of them over the years. But even for folks like us, it’s not the sort …. 2026 Retrocomputing Challenge: Explore Space with a Credit Card Reader.
It’s just a keypad, a display, and a magnetic stripe reader. That may be true in some cases, but at least for the 1990s-era TRANZ 330, there’s a bit more to the story than that. As [CharlesD] explains, these particular readers are essentially complete Z80 computers just waiting to do something more exciting than processing PINs.
In the case of this particular unit, the addition of a GPS module and some new code has turned it into an interactive guide to the solar system. Thanks to the UV erasable ROMs used in the TRANZ 330, loading new code on the device is easy enough. With a bit of educated poking around, [CharlesD] was able to map out what did what.
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