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RESTRICTED USE ONLY Fargo Electronics, Inc.
HDP 800 Series Card Printer/Encoders Service Manual (Rev. 5.0)
227
Sending the Track Information
Magnetic track data is sent in the form of text strings from the application software to the
Printer Driver.
• In order for the Printer Driver to differentiate between Magnetic Track data and the rest of
the printable objects, specific characters must be added to the magnetic data to be
encoded.
• These specify the data that is to be encoded, the tracks to encode and mark the start and
stop of the data string.
• In some cases, these specific characters are automatically added to the string of track
data by ID software applications.
• In most cases, the user must manually add these characters to the string of Magnetic
Track data. If these characters are not added to the track data, the text intended for the
Magnetic Track will appear as printed text on the card.
• To avoid this, track information must be entered as described below.
Step Procedure
1 When entering track data, the "~" (tilde) character is entered first, followed by the
track number (1, 2 or 3) on which the data should encode. This is followed by the
data to be encoded.
• The first character of this data string must be the track's specific Start
Sentinel (SS) and the last character must be the specific End Sentinel (ES).
• The characters or data in between the SS and ES can include all of the valid
characters specific to each track.
• The number of these characters, however, is limited by each track's
maximum character capacity.
• When segmenting track data, the appropriate Field Separator (FS) must be
used. The table on the next page shows the SS, ES, FS and the valid
characters defined for each track.