|
|
Modifying your CueCat to spit out normal barcodes
First, a BIG disclaimer:
WARNING: If you follow these directions, and it doesn't
work for your CueCat, you may end up frying the CueCat, Your Keyboard,
and/or your computer. My friend lost the PS/2 keyboard controller in his
machine by straying from these instructions, so please be careful and
realize you are placing yourself in a position that is at risk, and you
are doing this at your own free will, and understand that I refuse to be
held responsible for any damage to any equipment or data, and you agree
that by following these instructions, you will not hold me responsible for
any damages done to your computer, devices, or data, or even
yourself.
Now that we have the obvious disclaimer type stuff out of the way, let's
begin.
Get a small phillips head screwdriver, and remove the four screws on the
bottom holding the scanner together.
Once you have the lid off, place the screws in it and set it aside in a
safe place
You will need a twist tie from a loaf of bread, or anything similar to do
this without tools. Retrieve that now.
Ok. Hold the cuecat like this <------- With the head (LED and scanner
unit) to the left as shown by my beautiful ASCII art because I am too lazy
to use my digital camera at this point in time.
Along the bottom of the board near the middle, there is 5 (five) holes in
the board that don't seem to go anywhere. If there isn't, please put the
lid back on, these instructions may or may not work and if you do any
experimentation, you are completely on your own.
Locate the red wire on the right of the scanner that is going into the
plastic plug header.
Strip both ends of the twist tie
Insert one end in the red wire hole of the header block
(carefully) ensuring that you make good electrical contact and that it stays in there without falling out
Now locate the second hole from the left (o o o X o) as shown from that
again beautifully rendered ASCII art that I will eventually replace with
pictures. Place the other end of the wire in it.
If the CueCat is still
plugged into a running system, open notepad and hit enter a few times to
ensure that it has the keyboard focus. If the cue cat software is open
right now please close it. Scan a UPC bar code several times into
notepad. It will prolly be that garbage at first but should eventually
start spitting the UPC out numerically. If not try jiggling the wires, try
restarting your machine (shut down and power off, then power on).
If you didn't have it connected, give yourself a "I am smart" cookie and
shut down your computer, plug in the cuecat, then turn it back on.
At this point you should be up and running. If it didn't work, you may
have a revision of the board that this is incompatible with.
|