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204 Zebra ZXP Series 8 Card Printer User’s Manual P1045430-002
E: Magnetic Card Encoder
Magnetic Encoding Type
ISO (Default)
The encoder reads and writes standard ISO track data formats in standard ISO track locations.
The following shows the three standard ISO tracks.
Each track can be encoded and decoded with ASCII characters in the standard default ISO
data formats:
The magnetic encoder can read or encode up to 3 tracks of digital information onto CR-80
cards incorporating a HiCo or LoCo magnetic stripe in the ISO 7811 format.
Encoding for the three tracks uses the ISO 7811 format.
• Track 1 uses 210 BPI (bits per inch) encoding in the International Air Transport
Association (IATA) format of 79 alphanumeric characters, at 7 bits per character.
• Track 2 uses 75 BPI encoding to store 40 numeric characters at 5 bits per character in
American Banking Association (ABA) format.
• Track 3 uses 210 BPI encoding of 107 numeric characters at 5 bits per character in
THRIFT format.
The ISO data formats include a preamble (all zeros), a start character, data (7-bit or 5-bit as
specified by ISO), a stop character, and a longitudinal redundancy check (LRC) character. The
7-bit data format has 6 bits of encoded data and a parity bit. The 5-bit data format has 4 bits of
encoded data and a parity bit.
The ISO data formats include a data field separator (or delimiter) that allows parsing of the
encoded track data. An example of separate data fields would be the ABA data format
(Track 2) that includes a Primary Account Number (PAN) field and an account information
field (for expiration date, country code, etc.).
Track Density
(bits per
inch)
Bits per
character
Character
parity
Length
(characters)
LRC
parity
Start
sentinel
End
sentinel
Start sentinel
offset
inches (mm)
1 210 7 Odd 76 Even % ? 0.293" (7.4)
2 75 5 Odd 37 Even ; ? 0.293" (7.4)
3 210 5 Odd 104 Even ; ? 0.293" (7.4)
Track 1 -- 210 BPI
Track 2 -- 75 BPI
Track 3 -- 210 BPI