User Manual

34
SP35 Info Central
as one job.) Test the application you use to determine the best way to send multiple cards to
the printer pool.
• If you do not want one or more printers to print cards as part of the pool, power off that printer.
The printer pool will identify a printer as available even when the printer status is Suspended or
Not Responding if the printer is powered on. If you need to use a printer separately from the
printer pool, install it on another PC or contact your service provider for assistance.
• Some applications track card completion status, and this data is available for cards sent to the
printer pool. The application can query the printer pool and obtain status for all cards processed
through the pool. Card completion status does not indicate which printer actually printed the
job.
• In the Printing Preferences dialog box for the printer pool, select SP35 as the printer type.
• For magnetic stripe encoding, use the same coercivity and magnetic stripe format values for all
printers and the printer pool. (If you select “Use printer settings,” make sure the settings in the
printers are the same; use the SmartDriver Diagnostics Utility to view magnetic stripe values if
needed.)
To use a printer pool:
1 In the application used to print cards, select the name assigned to the printer pool when it was
installed.
2 Make sure that all printers you want to receive card data and print cards have the same type of
supplies loaded and the same settings.
For example, to print color and encode magnetic stripe, load YMCKT ribbon in the printer and use high-
coercivity magnetic stripe cards. Each printer identifies the ribbon type as YMCKT, but the pool cannot
identify the Print Ribbon Type so you must set the Print Ribbon Type.
3 Make sure the printers are powered on and ready.
4 Select Print in the application. The application sends the cards to the printer pool, which randomly
distributes the card jobs among the available Datacard printers. When all printers are busy, the printer
pool keeps the card jobs in a queue until the next printer is not busy. It will send the next card job as
soon as any printer in the pool is available.
– A printer is available if:
• The number of jobs active in the printer is less than the number of jobs supported for that printer
type
• No jobs are pending in the spooler for that printer
• The printer is not paused
• The printer is not set to “work offline”
• The printer status is not “User Intervention Required”
• The Printer Toolbox is not in Advanced Setup mode
5 After a card is sent by the printer pool to a specific printer, it cannot be removed from that printer and
assigned to another printer.
6 When a printer issues a message, the message appears on the PC with the name of the printer in the
title bar of the message box. The printer will be unavailable to print cards until the situation causing the
message is corrected. Other printers in the pool will continue to receive card jobs and print cards.