102 Card Design and Setup
Card Design: Magnetic Stripe
This section covers the following topics:
• “About Magnetic Stripe”
• “Magnetic Stripe Formats”
• “Use Magnetic Stripe Escapes”
• “Use Magnetic Stripe Fonts”
About Magnetic Stripe
Magnetic stripe is an option available in the printer. See
the Printer Status page of Printer Properties for the
printer to see if your printer has a magnetic stripe
option. The cards you use must also have a magnetic
stripe. The magnetic stripe is a brown or black stripe
close to one long edge of the card.
See the package containing new cards for details about
the magnetic stripe.
The magnetic stripe option is set up to
define the
coercivity, number of t
racks, and data format. The
coercivity and data format are set in the printer. The installer sets these values
and they remain the same for all cards printed using the same design. See “Set
Magnetic Stripe Coercivity” if you need to change the coercivity.
The data format determin
es how many characters can be encoded on a track. It
also determines which characters can be encoded. See “Three-Track Option”to
see the characters available with the default I
SO three-track format.
See “Single-Track Option”to see the characters available with the JIS single-
track format.
Your cards can use the default format for each track, or can use a different
comb
ination of tracks and data formats.