Serial.read from an ID20 (ID-12) RFID tag

Development Boards Arduino
1

Hi:

I’m having a difficult time reading from the [ID20 chip and want to rule out that it’s not my Arduino Duemilanove (ATMEGA328).

I have the chip connected to transmit to the Arduino’s pin #0 (just like at confirmed at [this page). Yet when I run the simple relay code

    if(Serial.available() > 0) {
      val = Serial.read();
      Serial.print(val, BYTE);
    }

I get bupkis in the Serial Monitor, or I get a constant stream of a single character (I think it was ‘ƥ’ at 9600bps). The relay connected to the ID20 blinks when the card is held close by, so I think the chip is at least awake. I’ve also tried this with NewSoftSerial a la

NewSoftSerial mySerial(2, 3);
mySerial.begin(9600);
loop() {
   if (mySerial.available()) {
      Serial.print((char)mySerial.read());
  }
}

but ditto.

Thank you for any help pointing out my boneheaded mistakes.

/m](RFID id-12 tagreader | Conversations with spaces)](RFID Reader ID-20LA (125 kHz) - SEN-11828 - SparkFun Electronics)