We have recently installed FMP6 on a Windows XP desktop to print magnet striped cards to a Fargo DTC525 printer.

The printer setup is fine, and the layouts look great. The problem is the mag stripe.

To encode the data, the printer needs ASCII characters with specified leads and endings. Piece of cake, I made calc fields to create that text for each record. Getting the printer to encode them properly, however, has eluded me.

I can print just text to the cards and it looks great. But when I add my calculated text strings to the layout, I lose the printed text and fail to encode the cards properly. When the encoder puts data on the tracks and I run them through a scanner, it shows some of the text, and a lot of crap.

I should note than I'm printing on the C80 card stock provided by Fargo, so card stock should not be an issue. Is this a driver problem? Is there a setting or plug in for FMP that I need? The rest of our office is on Mac OS9 and X, so some of the vagaries of the Windows environment are still new to us.

We are three weeks away from opening a colossal expansion, and these magentic cards are Phase I of a big database consolidation project. Any help would be appreciated, and if you're in the Minneapolis area, I will gladly give you two tickets to our grand opening if you help me find a solution.

Thanks!

-Aaron Szopinski

Why don't you give us your Calculation & how you print (just a standard print?).

Did the Fargo printer come with its own driver (I would assume so).

Define specified leads and endings (like escape characters?). Are you talking about non-printable characters?

If so, you might need to look at a Container Field, rather than a Text Field. I'm heading to the gym, but I'll check back later. Hopefully somebody will give you a more definitive answer.