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[Euchre]

[MOVIELORD101]

[hughesst]

[ADarkly]

[MOVIELORD101]

[Rogi Ocnorb]

It's NOT a magstripe

[hughesst]

Re: It's NOT a magstripe

[MOVIELORD101]

Re: It's NOT a magstripe

[WolfinPDX]

Re: It's NOT a magstripe

[Broklynite]

On further reflection, the mainframe idea is poor- the data is too simple for mainframe reading.

So what does that leave us with? Two options. One is that it is a graphical code- that is, the image of the bits are meant to be lined up in order to form an image. The second is that it is a cipher meant to be translated into words/letters. (I know I'm stating the obvious here, but I like to try to be logical and define the problem to try to make it easier to tackle).

There appear to be six rows of data, and what appears to be 110 columns. This would seem to imply that the data is meant to be read from left to right rather than up to down. It is also too many spaces for morde code, which would become nonsense anyway. While some bits (on my card, Arc Wars) are double width, others are on top of each other. When on top of each other, individual bits can be distinguished from one another. When side by side they cannot. Are these meant to be two bits, or one bit twice as wide? Double-width bits only appear along the bottom row. Perhaps they are meant to distinguish areas of individual data. If it is only numbers seperated by double-width bits, mine reads 3, 2, 12, 9. I also do not think that the card is meant to be read upside down. When I angle the card carefully, three horizontal lines, impressions on the card itself, are visible right below the strip- presumably from where the printer held the card.

I don't think it's punchcard- punchcards were as a standard 80 columns long. Also, there are simply far, far too many punchcard standards to go through to make that reasonable. Data is almost always at least one box-space apart between bits, with the exception of the very first few. Code for beginning of line? When overlayed, data tends to clump together- generally four spaces between areas of data. This hints of purposeful segregation. If binary, we see a 64-bit data combination reading as follows (for overlayed card, read top top bottom): 22, 33,0,0,1, 1, 0 , 50, 5, etc, but that already looks like nonsense. Even if read from bottom to top it still looks like nonsense.

[Phase9]

Braille?

[Broklynite]

Re: Braille?

[Broklynite]

Hm. In my photoshop overlay I count 110 columns, while I see that in the layed out version where letters were superimposed there were 90. Anyone know what happened with the other 20 columns?

[Distraction]

Dont try this at home...

[Waterborn2o2p]

Another silly question (I reviewed the thread and could not find any reference to this) has anyone tried orienting the bands vertically and the playing with them in that orientation? All the prints on the front are aligned in this manner. Thought it was curious that not one had a horizontal picture.