Lexmark Barcode and Forms Card issues (replacement to Lexmark Optra Forms Card)

[david.morris]

Hello,

I am wanting to get a 100% perfect Workstation Customisation Object (WSCST) to use with a Lexmark T654 printer with a Barcode and Forms Card (30G0834).

We have used the Lexmark Optra Forms cards in Lexmark T620 printers for roughly 10-12 years now without any problems. Now our printers are out of lease and we must change them to Lexmark T654 printers. The new printers do not support the Optra Forms card. We must now use the new Lexmark Barcode and Forms Card (30G0834) and the new Forms Composer software.

I am 99% done with this new implementation but there are two issues outstanding.

Issue 1 is the FILTER=AS400 setting. This is a setting on the printer that must be activated otherwise forms with bold and underline will not print correctly. This setting can be set manually on the printer but it is disabled as soon as a print job from another operating system is sent to the printer (such as Windows). The WSCST needs to have the appropriate INITPRT and RESETPRT codes to turn this setting on and off. I found a support article by Lexmark Spain but it did not appear to work for me.

Issue 2 is when sending a "plain" report that does not require an overlay form. The old Optra Forms card and software had a "default" form that was used for any report that did not have a specific form defined for it. The new Barcode and Forms Card and Forms Composer software does not appear to support this. Therefore when sending a plain report (such as a WRKSYSSTS) to the printer it includes four codes in the top left hand corner of the report. The codes appear as a black triangle followed by the letter b, then another triangle followed by the letter u, then the same thing again. These are the BOLD and UNDERSCORE codes.

I am sure my problems can be solved if I have a 100% perfect WSCST object that is designed to work with the Barcode and Forms Card.

Any advice?

[ZB Joe Johari]

Re: Lexmark Barcode and Forms Card issues (replacement to Lexmark Optra Forms Card)

David,

I have an optra form MICR printer printing check from the AS400. The vendor does not support this printer anymore. How do you migrate optraform (forms, datamap) to the new form composer.

Is there a tool for migrating from optra form to form composer?

Any info?

[david.morris]

Re: Lexmark Barcode and Forms Card issues (replacement to Lexmark Optra Forms Card)

Hi Joe,

There is a tool to migrate from Optra Forms over to Lexmark Forms Composer, however I did not get good results when using it.

The tool is called OFtoLFC and is available from Lexmark. The idea of the tool sounds good. Select the Optra Forms "Style" folder (as the input) and select the Lexmark Forms Composer destination folder and click Convert.

I had a lot of manual work to fix up all of the things that did not convert correctly. Main problem I found was regarding the positions of the objects were all over the place.

In the end I manually re-created the forms as I only had approximately 20-30 forms to do.

Also, I have not been able to get a 100% perfect solution for the problem I originally posted. Lexmark have tried to help but with no luck. The latest firmware they supplied to me made things much worse. Now nothing prints correctly.

I am looking at alternative solutions now.

This is a real shame as the old Optra Forms solution worked so well for so long. The new offering appears to be good but in reality has too many problems to implement into a production environment (in my opinion).