Printer and ink cartridge attached thereto
First Claim
1. A printer, to which a cartridge is detachably attached, said cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said printer comprising:
- rewritable printer memory;
an information writing unit that writes information on a quantity of ink in said cartridge, which is consumed with a progress of a printing operation on said printing medium, as data of a predetermined number of bits, into said printer memory; and
a memory writing unit that converts the information on the quantity of ink in said cartridge to data of a specific number of bits, which is less than the predetermined number of bits, and writes the converted data of the specific number of bits into said non-volatile memory included in said cartridge.
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Abstract
In a printer of the present invention, an EEPROM that carries out sequential access and has a small storage capacity is applied for storage elements mounted on both black and color ink cartridges. Data relating to each ink cartridge, for example, data on remaining quantities of respective inks in the ink cartridge, are stored as 8-bit data in the storage element of the ink cartridge. A print controller incorporated in the printer has an EEPROM, in which the data relating to the ink cartridges are stored as 32-bit data. In the case of no replacement of the ink cartridge, the 32-bit data are used for the subsequent processing. In the case of replacement of one ink cartridge with another, on the other hand, the 8-bit data are used for the subsequent processing. This arrangement of the invention enables the data relating to the ink cartridges, for example, the data on the remaining quantities of the respective inks in the ink cartridges, to be processed accurately even when a storage unit of a small storage capacity is applied for the storage elements mounted on the ink cartridges.
85 Citations
31 Claims
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1. A printer, to which a cartridge is detachably attached, said cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said printer comprising:
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rewritable printer memory;
an information writing unit that writes information on a quantity of ink in said cartridge, which is consumed with a progress of a printing operation on said printing medium, as data of a predetermined number of bits, into said printer memory; and
a memory writing unit that converts the information on the quantity of ink in said cartridge to data of a specific number of bits, which is less than the predetermined number of bits, and writes the converted data of the specific number of bits into said non-volatile memory included in said cartridge. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20)
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21. A method of managing information in a printer, to which a cartridge is detachably attached, said cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said method comprising the steps of:
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writing information on a quantity of ink in said cartridge, which is consumed with a progress of a printing operation on said printing medium, as data of a predetermined number of bits, into a rewritable printer memory incorporated in a main body of said printer; and
converting the information on the quantity of ink in said cartridge to data of a specific number of bits, which is less than the predetermined number of bits, and writing the converted data of the specific number of bits into said non-volatile memory included in said cartridge.
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22. A cartridge that keeps ink therein and has a rewritable non-volatile memory, said cartridge being detachably attached to a printer,
wherein information on a quantity of ink in said cartridge, which is consumed with a progress of a printing operation, is written into said non-volatile memory as data of a specific number of bits, which is less than a predetermined number of bits allocated to data stored in said printer.
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31. A computer program product comprising:
a computer usable medium having computer readable program code means embodied in said medium for managing information in a printer, to which a cartridge is detachably attached, said cartridge keeping ink therein and having a rewritable non-volatile memory, said printer causing the ink kept in said cartridge to be transferred to a printing medium, thereby implementing a printing operation, said the computer readable program code means comprising;
a first program code that causes a computer to write information on a quantity of ink in said cartridge, which is consumed with a progress of a printing operation on said printing medium, as data of a predetermined number of bits, into a rewritable printer memory incorporated in a main body of said printer; and
a second program code that causes the computer to convert the information on the quantity of ink in said cartridge to data of a specific number of bits, which is less than the predetermined number of bits, and write the converted data of the specific number of bits into said non-volatile memory included in said cartridge.
Specification