I'm not sure exactly what you want, but your task is similar to a few programs I've written in Basic and Pascal (not in Perl yet). You'll probably want to modify your program that reads the port to redirect that output to a file (use "\n" to define one swipe as one file record). Better yet write to a database of some sort that also stores date/time of swipe and some autonumber key (whatever you need). This process runs 24/7 if necessary.

Write another program that monitors the file/database for new/unprocessed records (keep a log of the records that you've successfully read/processed, or include a flag for that in each database record as well). You can run this at whatever terminal you want and echo the raw/processed results to the screen.

As far as the monitor program is concerned, it doesn't know/care whether the input is coming straight from a port or file.

Hope this helps.

"Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein