While with IBM research I started working on a smart card project working with magneticly encoded data. Unfortunatly the only data that I found was in obscure books and old "hacker" postings. Neither of which are a reliable source of data if I want to go look something up. As a result I started compiling what I learned on the web. These pages represent a comilation of the information I found in the public domain on magneticly encoded media and magnetic tapes. It is no where complete and probably does contain errors. My intent is to mirror the information I compiled here where I will be able to find it again later. Hopefully it will be of use to others as well. If I have missed something or made a technical mistake please contace me and let me know.