Textbox using textmode password not showing text asp.net c#

Question

I have a few buttons on a web form, and when the user clicks them they will update the the textbox. This worked till I added the textmode = password. Now the textbox doesn't show the text anymore. I debugged the app, and the text property is getting the value, but once again it is not showing.

Here is what I have tried:

 protected void btn_punch_7_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

        const string string_punch_Number_7 = "7";
        var text = txt_punch.Text;
        text += string_punch_Number_7;

        txt_punch.Text = text;


    }

    protected void btn_punch_8_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        const string string_punch_Number_8 = "8";
        var text = txt_punch.Text;
        text += string_punch_Number_8;

        txt_punch.Text = text;

    }

I have also tired this:

public partial class WebForm3 : System.Web.UI.Page
{
    public string string_punch;
    protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        MultiView1.SetActiveView(View1);

        txt_punch.Width = 300;
        txt_punch.Height = 50;
        txt_punch.MaxLength = 4;
        txt_punch.Attributes.Add("OnChange", string_punch);

    }

    protected void btn_punch_7_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {

        const string string_punch_Number_7 = "7";
        string_punch = txt_punch.Text;
        string_punch += string_punch_Number_7;

        txt_punch.Text = string_punch;


    }

    protected void btn_punch_8_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)
    {
        const string string_punch_Number_8 = "8";
        string_punch = txt_punch.Text;
        string_punch += string_punch_Number_8;

        txt_punch.Text = string_punch;

    }

Answer 1

How desperate are you?

If you're not desperate enough to try anything, anything to get it to work, don't read on. This will not be nice. OK? OK.

The trick is to make the web app think that it's not a password box. In other words, don't use TextMode="password".
Then in Page_Load, put txt_punch.Attributes["type"] = "password"

That's it. The browser will know it's a password field (and show asterisks or dots), but the server side won't know, so it will send the content to the client as it it were plain text. Of course, this will also put the password in the page source...