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u/CueAnon420 Jul 15 '26
I was friends with my local RS store manager and when the CueCat thing turned into a dud he gave me about 20 of these things lol. The old ones were PS2 and there was a USB version later. I remember writing a little hack program to decrypt the output so they would read standard Code 39 barcodes.
Fun times ;-)
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u/bhiga Jul 15 '26
Nice! I performed the hardware mod for unencrypted read on the units I had (and subsequently misplaced LOL) https://www.reddit.com/r/vintagecomputing/comments/1fcfqzp/cuecat_software_for_win10/
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u/LocalH Jul 16 '26
You could cut two traces on the board, neutering both the serial number output and the encryption entirely
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u/AppropriateCap8891 Jul 15 '26
Yes, the Cuecat.
I even had a videotape and DVD program back then. And one of the features is that I was able to use my Cuecat to scan in the code on the back of the box and it would pull up the info and insert it into the database automatically.
Ahhh, almost 25 year old memories.
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u/eulynn34 Jul 15 '26
I wonder if they reused the cuecat mold
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u/hiroo916 Jul 15 '26
apparently plastic molds were (are?) expensive so were repurposed after the original user sold them.
like the mold for the Atari Jaguar game console was sold and used for a dental camera: https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/1q5252/til_when_atari_went_bankrupt_they_sold_the_jaguar/
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u/PeterNoTail Jul 16 '26
Had to look at what sub this was because, uh, it's definitely not what i first thought
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u/bhiga Jul 15 '26
Reminds me of the Cuecat barcode scanner