Due to the large volume of summary requests I received, I am posting this summary instead of mailing it. It's somewhat long, so hit 'n' now if you're not interested in this stuff. After the replies I have included some software that I threw together to play with the card reader. This file contains all the information I have on this subject.
Additions are most welcome.
Someone with a fully functional reader can easily extend what I wrote to get it to decode the actual data content of the card. The wires are red, yellow, green, blue, and black. But I don't know active levels, or which wire is what. I picked few week ago a magnetic credit card reader from a another surplus outfit. It cost about the sam es yours.