Barcode Scanner: Cheating in Style.

20Mar/180

Barcode Scanner: Cheating in Style.

I picked up a random hand-held barcode scanner from the markets a few months back and it's been sitting on the shelf waiting for a proper reason to exist. Whilst playing a marathon game of Bubble Bobble on the MSX (and losing, we just couldn't beat the boss), I google'd for cheats. They were all enterable via the keyboard on the main screen... but then it occurred to me... A barcode scanner on a PC would be the best way to quickly type in cheats for your game of choice.

The Scanner

This thing is a hand-held model with stand. It's a DataLogic QuickScan QD2100 and the drivers can be found here.

Note that the device will install perfectly well on windows and show up as a HID Compliant Keyboard.

Once installed, any barcodes scanned will be input via a virtual keyboard, along with a carriage return! To fix this, I'd assumed we'd install drivers and configure the device via software. It turns out instead that we'll need to directly configure the scanner itself via programming barcodes. Grab the manual here and browse to page 90. Read the instructions that they've mentioned:

Go to page 91 and scan the top programming code.
Scan the Set Global Suffix code
Scroll all the way to page 291 and scan the 0 code twice
Scroll all the way back up and scan the programming code again to exit

Making Barcodes

There's a ton of online sites that'll do this for you. My first hit was Barcodes Inc's online barcode generator. From here, even from the screen, you can zap the codes and test the device. It should all work pretty flawlessly.

Doom

I must admit, as soon as this idea came to mind, this was the game that I thought of first. Yes, it's dos-based and this scanner isn't... but that doesn't stop me from using it under DosBox.

GOD Mode	All Guns/Keys/Ammo/Armor	Show location details
Temporary automap	Temporary radiation suit	Temporary light
Temporary invisibility	Temporary invulnerability	Temporary berserk
Change map detail	Chainsaw	Walk through walls
All Guns/Ammo/Armor

What's Next?

You could use this to automate processes: Run-through an entire game maybe? Play music? Probably nothing at-all worthwhile... but nonetheless still fun!