/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1108760
There are plenty of SMD components you can solder with a normal soldering iron.

>>1108762
You can do RS232 to TTL conversion with couple of transistors and a handful of passives, if you don't need much speed. Pic related.
It does not handle the handshake lines, but there's a decent chance your reader does not use them. If it does, you can try shorting pin 7 to 8 (RTS to CTS) and tying the remaining 4 pins together as well.