KR930003992B1 - Method of connecting terminals in electrical cash register - Google Patents

Abstract

The method providing the tansmitting/receiving function to ECR comprises: a process for classifying whether the selection key is terminal function or previous ECR, which is called as ECR having a simple function, after operating for initialization; a process for down-loading the program from the master if the terminal mode is set; a process for transmitting the registered data to the master in the case of executing the registering process by the down-loaded program. If the error is generated during the program down-loading, the demanding signal for re-receiving is transmitted to the master, followed by down-loading the corresponding program re-received from the master.

Description

How to terminalize a cash register

1 is a block diagram of a cash register according to the present invention.

2 is a flow chart of the present invention.

3 is a data communication schematic diagram of a cash register.

The present invention relates to a function expansion method in an electronic cash register, and more particularly, to a terminalization method of a single-function cash register.

In general, the cash register (hereinafter referred to as the ECR) and the point of sales system (hereinafter referred to as ECR) are used to manage the merchandise sales in line with the acceleration of the industrial society and the rapid development of the electronic industry, and the systemization of most office automation products. Called POS).

The POS basically consists of a POS terminal and a storage controller. In some cases, it may be connected to a central host computer that aggregates and manages this. Here, the storage controller has a product information file stored in advance and stored. If the information previously entered in the file matches the product type, unit price, product name, and section code, the corresponding information is read. Send back to the server.

The ECR is intended to be used independently of each other without using only one or several systems in a small business. Each ECR independently performs information input or operation processing such as commodity price or quantity, and issuance of report of transaction history, and does not affect other ECR. Therefore, even if a large number of companies use several units, the whole store management was forced to collect the contents generated in each of the ECRs by hand. Such a conventional ECR is referred to as a "functional group ERC" for convenience.

For example, assuming that only the POS-only establishments continue to generate jobs that can handle enough ERCs, the establishments will have no choice but to process the work with the POS terminal or purchase the EECs separately. . However, separately purchasing a monofunctional ECR has a disadvantage in terms of economic burden. In addition, using a POS terminal is not preferable in terms of efficient operation of POS. This is because each slave terminal in the POS, of course, cannot be the same as the master terminal that oversees the system in terms of its configuration, but with almost the same components except for the oversight of the system.

Accordingly, an object of the present invention is to provide a method for having a data transmission / reception function in an ECR.

Another object of the present invention is to provide a method for enabling an ECR to function as a terminal or a terminal of a system according to a user's selection.

In order to achieve the above object, the present invention provides a terminal mode selection process for distinguishing between a single function or a terminal by scanning and analyzing a use selection key after an initialization operation upon power input, and when the terminal mode is set, a program from a master It is characterized in that it comprises a program download process for downloading the file, and a registration data transmission process for transmitting the registered data to the master when the registration process is performed by the downloaded program.

Hereinafter, the present invention will be described with reference to the accompanying drawings.

1 is a configuration diagram of an ECR according to the present invention,

ROM 10, which contains various programs and initial data for merchandise sales management, RAM 20 temporarily storing processing data according to merchandise sales, and various orders and data for merchandise sales and management thereof. The keyboard 30 to input, the print unit 40 for printing receipts and audit papers according to the transaction results, the display unit 50 for displaying the current processing status and various data, and the overall operation of the ECR are collectively controlled. The microcomputer 60 also controls data transmission and reception by an external system.

2 is a flowchart of data transmission and reception of an ECR according to the present invention.

3 is a communication functional block diagram between a master and a slave terminal, where 3a is a schematic diagram of data transmission from a master to a slave, and 3b is a schematic diagram illustrating an example of receiving item program data from a master at a slave.

The present invention will be described in detail based on the above configuration.

Communication in ECR is used to share data managed in ECR between master and slave. The basic function of communication is to use the sending / receiving buffer and status register built in the microcomputer and to transfer data to master and slave. The transmission and reception is realized by using the control code specified in the protocol promised. At this time, each stage of the master and slave realizes communication by sending / receiving control such as character transmission / reception error check, block unit error check, and data block classification.

Referring to (3a) of FIG. 3, the data reception operation in the slave will be described in detail. That is, the data transfer status is read from the master and the status register built into the microcomputer of the slave is read to determine the start of reception, and when reception is started, the character unit or block unit error check and the reception data block classification are performed as described above. When the received data is saved in the user buffer and the reception is completed, the data type division area of the designated point in the input data is read and the data is stored in the promised position. As an example, the case of item program data reception is shown (3b).

A method of assigning a terminal function to a multifunctional ECR on the premise of the above ECR communication function is as follows.

First, when power is supplied to the system, the microcomputer 60 performs an initialization operation in step (I) of FIG. After the system initialization, in step (2), a key scan is detected to detect a usage selection key input by the user. When the key is detected, the key is analyzed and the terminal mode is requested. That is, it checks whether the user wants to use the ECR for a function or a terminal. If the check indicates that the terminal mode is required, go to step (3) to clear the buffer point, (4) clear all data areas on the system, and proceed to step (5) to set the terminal flag (TF). (The above-mentioned use classification procedure shall be attempted only once when installing the system.) Here, the buffer is an area prepared for normal retransmission when a problem occurs in the transmission of the registration data performed during registration. According to the operation procedure described below, the data accumulated in the buffer will be retransmitted at a certain point in time, and the registration data to be transmitted will be transmitted and received in the form of a predetermined type, content, and the like. In addition, the terminal flag (TF) may be used as a single function or as a slave terminal that performs an ECR function as a single function and a communication function with a master (master ECR or computer) according to a set or reset state. It is to display. The above corresponds to the terminal mode selection process.

Meanwhile, when the terminal flag TF is set, three communication functions are performed. First, there is a program down-loading reception function to perform the ECR function from the master. Secondly, there is a function of transmitting registration contents (data requiring management at the master) to the master, which are changed when performing registration. Third, there is a function of transmitting the contents accumulated in the buffer.

Hereinafter, the three communication functions will be described in detail based on the operation procedure of FIG. 2. After completing step (5), the microcomputer 60 proceeds to step (6) and checks whether a program down request command is generated from the master. If the check result confirms that a program down request command has been generated from the master, the process proceeds to step (7) to check the state of the terminal flag TF to determine whether the program is set. If the terminal flag TF is set as the result of the check, it means that the communication with the master is possible as described above. In step 8, the control unit 50 controls the display unit 50 to indicate the reception start and stops other operations (9). In step), data (program contents) input from the master are received and stored in the corresponding program area of the terminal in accordance with a predetermined form.

After the reception data is stored, the process proceeds to step 10 to check whether the reception operation is completed normally. If the reception is normally completed, the display unit 50 indicates that the reception is completed and returns. On the other hand, when a problem occurs in the reception, the control proceeds to step (12) to display the reception error state through the display unit 50, and then performs appropriate error processing in step (13).

After the error processing (14), if the reset request state of the terminal itself, such as power on / off operation is acknowledged, if the terminal itself is not in the reset request state (15) to proceed to receive data to the master once again If a request for re-receipt is requested, looping to step (8) is repeated to repeat the above-described operation. On the other hand, if it is determined in step (14) that the terminal itself is a reset request, the process returns to the system initial state by looping to step (1). The downloading operation of the above program should be performed while other operation functions are stopped. This is to prevent confusion of contents registered when changing program contents. The above is the program downloading process.

On the other hand, in the step (6), if it is not the program down request state, it attempts to retransmit the data that has not been transferred in advance, or processes other functions such as registration, program, and report. In other words, if it is determined in step (6) that the program is not in a program down request state from the master, the process proceeds to step (16) to check whether an error flag is set. If the error flag is not set as a result of the check, it is checked in step (17) whether the buffer point is pulled. If the buffer point is not a pool, the process proceeds to step 18 to check whether it is zero. When the buffer point is 0 as a result of the check, after the key scan operation is performed in step 37, the scanned key is analyzed in step 38 to check whether it is a registered functional group. At this time, if it is not the registration function (50) proceeds to check whether the program function. In the case where the result of the check is a program functional unit, the process loops to step (6) described above after the program processing in step (51). Herein, the program processing operation refers to an operation of inputting desired information into a memory when a corresponding key is inputted, such as item name, item price, tax rate, discount rate, premium rate, and system option.

If it is determined in step (50) that the program function is not a check function in step (52), and if it is a report function, in step (53) after the report processing looping to step (6). Here, the report processing operation is to check and settle the registered contents after daily closing and classify them into daily sales history, sales history by time period, sales history by item, sales history by person in charge, and print and settle the contents of each corresponding memory. Note means action.

If it is determined in step (52) that the report function is not also the process proceeds to step (54) and loops to step (6) after processing the function.

However, if it is determined in step (38) that the registration function, proceed to step (39) to perform the registration process (40) to perform the display and fritting operation. After performing step (40), in step 41, the terminal flag TF is checked to be set, and if the terminal flag TF is not set, the process loops to step (6). On the other hand, if the terminal flag TF is set in step (41) (step 42), the display unit 50 is controlled to display the start of transmission, and then in step 43, the line check operation is performed. If it is determined that the normal state is obtained by analyzing the line check result in step (44), the process proceeds to step (45), and after the registered data is transmitted, it is determined whether the data transmission is normally completed in step (46). When the process proceeds to step 47, the display unit 70 controls to display the transmission end point and returns. However, when a line error occurs in step (44) or when a transmission error occurs in step (46), go to step (48) to temporarily store the registered data in the buffer (49). In step), the buffer point is increased and then returned.

On the other hand, if the buffer point is not 0 in step (18), since there is data that has not been transmitted, an attempt is made to retransmit. That is, in step (19), the transmission error count is cleared, and in step (20), the display unit 50 is controlled to display the start of transmission, and then in step (21), the line check operation is performed. If there is no abnormality in the line check result, the data stored in the buffer is transmitted to the master in step (23), and then, in step (24), it is checked whether the transmission is normal. The contents of the buffer are sequentially transmitted by repeating until the buffer point check result in step 26 is zero. If it is detected in step (26) that the buffer point is 0, in step (27), the display unit 50 controls to indicate the end of the transmission and returns. At this time, the data can be sent all at once or divided by considering the speed of the system depending on the size of the buffer.

However, if it is determined that an error has occurred as a result of the line check in step (22), the process proceeds to step (28) to increase the transmission error count and then the count value does not become a predetermined number (N) in step (29). In this case, looping to step (21) is performed to repeat the above-described line check operation. On the other hand, if an error continues until the count value reaches a certain number of times, an error flag is set in step 30, the error count is cleared in step 31, and then the display unit 50 is turned on in step 32. The control indicates the occurrence of a transmission error and returns to hold the terminal itself and enter the diagnostic key request state. After repairing the terminal manually, if the diagnostic key is inputted, the retransmission operation is performed again. If the system reset operation is performed, the system reset is performed again. That is, when it is determined that the error flag is set in step (16) or when the buffer point is pulled in step (17), the transmission error is displayed through the display unit 50 in step (33) (step 34). Proceed to check the diagnosis key input status. If the diagnostic key is input as a result of the check, looping to the step (22) after checking the line in step (35). If the diagnostic key is not input in the step (34), the system reset is checked in step (36). When resetting, looping is performed in the above-described step (1), and when it is not in the reset state, the looping is performed in step 34 to check whether the diagnosis key is input again. The above is the registration data transmission process. However, the program processing or report issuance and registration work by the input of the functional group is well known and the ECR described in the present embodiment is an ECR serving as a terminal, so the registered data is transmitted to the master after the registration work. Note that it has an additional process.

As described above, the present invention is equipped with a simple data transmission / reception function in the ECR, so that it can be used as a terminal or a terminal according to a user's request. It also has the advantage of minimizing costs.

Claims (3)

A method of terminalizing a cash register having a data transmitting / receiving function, comprising: a terminal mode selection process for distinguishing between a single function or a terminal by scanning and analyzing a use selection key after an initialization operation upon power input; and setting the terminal mode to the terminal mode And a program download process for downloading a program from the master, and a registration data transfer process for transmitting the registered data to the master when registration processing is performed by the downloaded program. 3. The method of claim 2, wherein if an error occurs during program download, a re-receive request signal is sent to the master, and if the corresponding program is retransmitted by the master, the method is downloaded. 4. The method of claim 2 or 3, wherein when detecting an abnormal state of a line during registration data transmission, the registered data is temporarily stored in a buffer, the buffer pointer is increased, and the buffer point is decreased when the line is returned to a normal state. And read data from the buffer and retransmit.

Images