Questions for the Equitrac gurus

[mrwho]

Hello there, guys and girls.

I'd like to post here a couple of questions to you about the inner workings of Equitrac, so if anyone can help me with these, please give me some insight:

- Magnetic Stripe Card Authentication
The prospective customer we're trying to sell the solution wants his students to use their already existing cards to authenticate.
I've been told that Equitrac only uses the last four digits on the card's magnetic stripe to authenticate, but I'd like to confirm that and, if it is true, if there's any way of programming that.
The trouble is that the student's cards double as ATM cards so we can't change them in any way - we must use them as-is to authenticate the students. But I doubt that we can guarantee that those last 4 digits will always be different for every student, specially when the total users of ATM machines is in the order of the bilion users and four digits only give us 10.000 possible combinations.
Help please?

- Receipt Printing
When using the Inepro loader, am I stuck with the receipt printer inside the loader? Or can I, in any way, program Equitrac to redirect the receipts to an existing printer - probably even using the Follow-You feature to give the student his receipt on an existing machine? That would be very nice.

Thanks in advance!

[Shadow1]

Not sure Equitrak can help you, and they've always been a pain in the 'nads to deal with anyway. Ricoh has just come out with their own CAC readers you might want to look into, but for all I really know about the system it may just be an extension of Equitrak

[mrwho]

Right now Equitrac is our only option, really. It fits most of the customer's needs, with just a couple of rough edges that we need to figure out - like these two, for example.

[ferastec]

what type of card you have??
is it HID or MIFARE

[Moza]

As far as i'm aware Equitrac will use the whole card nuber for authentication providing its in the correct field within active directory

All you need is a card reader to read info off the card

[IDSTechnical]

- Magnetic Stripe Card Authentication
The prospective customer we're trying to sell the solution wants his students to use their already existing cards to authenticate.
I've been told that Equitrac only uses the last four digits on the card's magnetic stripe to authenticate, but I'd like to confirm that and, if it is true, if there's any way of programming that.
The trouble is that the student's cards double as ATM cards so we can't change them in any way - we must use them as-is to authenticate the students. But I doubt that we can guarantee that those last 4 digits will always be different for every student, specially when the total users of ATM machines is in the order of the bilion users and four digits only give us 10.000 possible combinations.
Help please?

You don't have to have only 4 digits used in Equitrac.

Pagecounter devices (PC100/300) read from magnetic swipe cards on Track 2 reading data from position 1 to 50 by default.

This can be changed in System Manager > User Authentication (Equitrac Office/Express 4.1.1)

As the cards can be lost or stolen a secondary pin should be assigned for added security.

Hope this answers this one for you if not then let me know.

Receipt Printing
When using the Inepro loader, am I stuck with the receipt printer inside the loader? Or can I, in any way, program Equitrac to redirect the receipts to an existing printer - probably even using the Follow-You feature to give the student his receipt on an existing machine? That would be very nice.

Not sure on this one at the minute, will do some digging and reply again.

Not sure Equitrak can help you, and they've always been a pain in the 'nads to deal with anyway. Ricoh has just come out with their own CAC readers you might want to look into, but for all I really know about the system it may just be an extension of Equitrak

Depending on where you are in the world I am sure the support you receive will differ. I have always found equitrac to be very helpful when I have spoken to them directly. Ricoh in the UK have an excellent knowledge of the Equitrac products so should you be in the uk and your a Ricoh dealer have a chat with the Ricoh proffessional services team about your proposed solution.

MrWho what are the other rough edges? I would be happy to help where I can.

Thanks
James