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Aamva, Custom, Binary – Zebra Technologies P1013372-001 REV. A User Manual

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Zebra ZXP Series 8 Card Printer with Laminator

P1013372-001 Rev. A

Magnetic Card Encoder

AAMVA

Alpha-numeric characters on Tracks 1 and 3, numerals only on Track 2.

CUSTOM

If a custom format is desired, the ISO standard format may be used as a starting point. The
standard format can then be modified by assigning different values to any or all of the density,
character, and sentinel attributes. (If any of these attributes is missing, its corresponding
value in the standard ISO format will be substituted.)

BINARY

The binary option allows the user to specify directly the value for each bit on the mag stripe:.

In this “direct binary” mode, it is the host’s responsibility to fully populate the magnetic stripe;
i.e., the hex data provided by the host must include the leading zeroes, start sentinel, data, end
sentinel, LRC, and trailing zeroes. Note that the magnetic stripe is encoded from the right-
hand end as viewed from the “stripe” side, with the stripe uppermost. The least significant bit
of the data is encoded first.

A sufficient number of leading zeroes should be prepended to offset the start sentinel by
approximately 0.3" (7.5 mm) from the right-hand end, as in the ISO format. Care should be
taken to ensure that the payload data does not exceed the capacity of the tracks at their
specified recording densities. (In the binary mode, out-of-range data is not recorded, and no
error condition will result.)

A CR-80 size card has a nominal capacity of 252 bits per track at 75 BPI, and 708 bits at
210 BPI. These capacities equate approximately to 31 hex bytes (248 binary bits) and 88 hex
bytes respectively.

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

79

Even

%

?

0.293" (7.4)

2

75

5

Odd

37

Even

;

?

0.293" (7.4)

3

210

7

Odd

79

Even

%

?

0.293" (7.4)