JP3012706B2 - Facsimile machine - Google Patents

Description

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a facsimile apparatus using a printer whose printing speed is lower than the image receiving speed.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art A facsimile machine is operated through a telephone line.
It can be easily communicated not only with Japan but also with other countries around the world, and is rapidly spreading.

[0003] Such facsimile apparatuses print and record received image data on recording paper using a printer, but most printers use a thermal printing method using a line thermal printer. I'm using However, facsimile machines incorporating an electrophotographic printer capable of printing on plain paper have been commercialized because thermal paper has poor writing and storage properties.

However, facsimile machines incorporating an electrophotographic printer are not suitable for business use in small offices or ordinary households because the equipment is large and expensive.

[0005]

Therefore, recently, there has been attempted to develop a facsimile apparatus capable of printing on small and inexpensive plain paper by using an ink jet serial printer as a printer. Since the printing speed is slower than the communication speed in the method, there was a problem how to deal with it.

Accordingly, the present invention uses a printer capable of printing on plain paper whose printing speed is lower than the image receiving speed, and copes with the difference in the speed with a relatively simple circuit configuration. It is an object of the present invention to provide a facsimile machine which can be realized and therefore can be reduced in size and cost.

[0007]

The invention corresponding to claim 1 is:
A printer that prints out received image data and controls the transmission and reception of image data via a communication line with a printer whose printing speed is lower than the image reception speed, and the received image data remains encoded when receiving Then, the received image data is temporarily stored in the RAM, and the received image data stored in the RAM is decoded to make a pass / fail judgment, and the judgment result is returned to the transmitting station for each page, and the received image data is left encoded. Status,
Alternatively, the main processor stores the file in the first buffer memory with the file deleted, and receives the received image data from the first buffer memory completely asynchronously with the communication, decodes the received image data, converts it into a printable format, and And a sub-processor for controlling the printer based on the data stored in the second buffer memory.

According to a second aspect of the present invention, the main processor further comprises a first buffer for inhibiting transfer of the received image data to the sub-processor when the printer is in a print-disabled state such as no recording paper. The storage of the received image data in the memory is continued.

According to a third aspect of the present invention, as a sub-processor, received image data is received from a first buffer memory, decoded, converted into a printable format, and stored in a second buffer memory, completely asynchronously with communication. A first sub-processor and a second sub-processor for controlling a printer based on data stored in a second buffer memory are provided.

According to a fourth aspect of the present invention, a serial printer is used as a printer, and the serial printer can receive and decode received image data from the first buffer memory completely asynchronously with communication and print line-form image data. In order to make the format more convenient, the image data is vertically and horizontally converted and stored in the second buffer memory, and a sub-processor for controlling the printer based on the data stored in the second buffer memory is provided.

[0011]

In the present invention having such a configuration, when image data is received via a communication line, the main processor performs a decoding process on the received image data to determine pass / fail.
A determination result is returned to the transmitting station for each page, and the received image data is stored in the first buffer memory in a state of being encoded or in a state where the file is further deleted. The sub-processor receives the received image data from the first buffer memory completely asynchronously with the communication, decodes it, converts it into a printable format, and stores it in the second buffer memory. Then, the printer is controlled based on the data stored in the second buffer memory.

The main processor inhibits the transfer of the received image data to the sub-processor and saves the received image data in the first buffer memory when the printer is in a print-disabled state such as no recording paper. To continue.

The first sub-processor receives the received image data from the first buffer memory completely asynchronously with the communication, decodes it, converts it into a printable format, and converts the received image data into a printable format.
In the buffer memory. The second sub-processor controls the printer based on the data stored in the second buffer memory.

The sub-processor receives and decodes the received image data from the first buffer memory completely asynchronously with the communication, converts the image data in a line format into a format printable by a serial printer, and performs a vertical / horizontal conversion. 2 is stored in the buffer memory.

[0015]

An embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings.

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing an external appearance.
Denotes an operation unit provided on the front surface of the housing 1, 3 denotes a handset provided on one side of the housing 1, 4 denotes a recording paper cassette, and 5 denotes a document insertion table. The operation section 2 is provided with various keys 6 such as a ten-key for one-touch dial operation and a one-touch dial key, and a liquid crystal display 7.

FIG. 2 schematically shows the internal structure of the housing. When a received image is recorded, one sheet of recording paper 8 stored in the recording paper cassette 4 is recorded by an automatic recording paper feeding mechanism 9. Each of them is fed into the housing by the feed mechanism 10, and the serial ink jet printer mechanism 11
An image is printed on the recording paper 8 in units of, for example, 50 dots by an ink-jet head 13 provided on the ink-jet carriage 12, and the recording paper 8 is discharged from a recording paper outlet 14 to the outside.

At the time of document transmission, the document 15 set on the document insertion table 5 is fed by the automatic document feeder 16, and the image is read by the image scanner 18 disposed opposite to the position of the platen roller 17 for halfway reading. The document is discharged to the outside by a discharge roller 19 from a document discharge port 20 provided on the front surface of the housing 1.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration.
Is a first processor as a main processor, 22 is a second processor as a first sub-processor, 23
Is a third processor as a second sub-processor.

The first processor 21 includes a program ROM 24 in which program data for controlling the respective parts of the processor 21 are stored, a RAM 25 used for data processing, a first buffer memory 26, a modem 2
7 and a latch circuit 28 are connected via a bus line 29. A network controller 30 is connected to the modem 27. The network controller 30 performs a circuit interface with a telephone line, and the modem 27 demodulates an analog signal in a voice band and converts it into a digital facsimile signal.

The second processor 22 includes a program ROM 31 in which program data for the processor 22 to control each unit is stored, a RAM 32 used for data processing, a second buffer memory 33, and a latch circuit 28. And a FIFO (first in first out) memory 34 are connected via a bus line 35.

The third processor 23 includes a program ROM 36 in which program data for the processor 23 to control each section, a static RAM 37 used for storing data, and the FIFO memory 3
4. The thermal array driver 38 and the motor drivers 39, 40 are connected via a bus line 41.

The thermal array driver 38 is connected to the ink jet head 13, the motor driver 39 is connected to a paper feed motor 42, and the motor driver 40 is a carriage motor 43 for driving the ink jet carriage 12. Is connected.

The first processor 21 has a built-in DMA (Direct Memory Access) function of two channels of DMA0 and DMA1,
Thus, a process of automatically storing data received by the modem 27 in the RAM 25 in a certain unit (for example, 128 bytes) is performed. The received data stored in the RAM 25 remains as facsimile MH code data, for example.

The first processor 21 has a RAM 25
The decryption processing is performed on the received data stored in the. At this time, if there is no bit error in the telephone line due to noise or the like, normal image data can be obtained for each line by decoding. However, if there is a bit error, a line that cannot be restored normally occurs. Therefore, the first processor 21 counts the number of lines that cannot be restored, and after receiving one page of the document, transmits the line to the transmitting station according to a certain criterion.

At the same time as this decoding processing, an extra fill (zero data inserted for the sake of time) is removed from the received data as it is as the MH code data.
DMA1 is stored in the first buffer memory 26.

Although the image information can be created by the decoding process, the decoded data is not stored at this time. That is, if data is stored at this point, the amount of storage increases when a large number of originals are received because the printer is slow, so that the amount of memory increases and the apparatus becomes expensive.

The second processor 22 is provided in the RAM 3
When 2 becomes empty, a data transmission request is made to the first processor 21 by a signal S. Thereby, the first processor 21 transfers the data in the first buffer memory 26 to the second processor 22 based on a predetermined number of bytes in the DMA1.

The second processor 22 also has a built-in DMA function of two channels of DMA0 and DMA1.
The data is received from the processor 21 by the DMA 0 and stored in the RAM 32. And the first processor 2
The latch circuit 28 interfaces the timing between the first and second processors 22.

The data stored in the RAM 32 is MH
The encoded data remains as it is, and the second processor 22 decodes it by software, converts it into a line image, and saves it again in the RAM 32. At this time, the bit arrangement of the image of the received data is in the horizontal direction, and is converted in the vertical direction in order to match this with the serial printer. The data arrangement in the vertical direction is performed in units of 50 lines, and has the configuration shown in FIG. The data d11,
Each of d12,..., d17 is 8 bits. For data d17, only the first two bits are used and the remaining two bits are ignored. Therefore, the data d11 to d17 have 50 dots. At this time, if the resolution of the facsimile image and the resolution of the printer are different, the resolution is also converted. The image data that has been vertically and horizontally converted is stored in the second buffer memory 33.

The third processor 23 controls each of the drivers 38, 39 and 40 based on the print data stored in the static RAM 37 to perform printing.
First, the third processor 23 sends a data transfer request to the second processor 22 if there is a free area in the RAM 37,
As a result, the second processor 22 starts data transfer in DMA1. The data transfer at this time is performed by the FIFO
This is performed via the O memory 34. The transfer unit is an amount to be printed in one scan of the serial printer.

The third processor 23 transfers data from the RAM 37 to the thermal array driver 38 while driving the carriage motor 43 by the motor driver 40, and prints on the recording paper by the ink jet head 13. ing.

In the embodiment having such a configuration, for example, if image data of 10 sheets of an A4 document is received, the communication time is about 30 seconds per sheet. Here, if the printing time for one A4 size sheet is about 1 minute in an ink jet serial printer, a state in which printing is clearly not in time occurs. On the other hand, the first processor 21
Sequentially saves the received data in the first buffer memory 26 while being MH-encoded.

At this time, the second processor 31 receives the data from the first buffer memory 26 with the ability to print independently of the data reception, decodes the data, and converts it into print data. And the third processor 23 is the second processor 2
The print data is received from the printer 2 and printed out by an ink jet serial printer.

That is, if the data transfer unit from the modem 27 is 256 bytes, as shown in FIG.
Is alternately taken into the communication buffers A and B of the RAM 25 by DMA0. Then, the data is stored in the first buffer memory 26 by the pointer A by the DMA1. When there is a data transfer request from the second processor 22, data is fetched and transferred by the pointer B in the DMA1. Thus, the first buffer memory 26 has a ring buffer configuration. If the pointer A can catch up with the pointer B, this is a buffer full state and further reception becomes impossible. At this time, the reception side is notified to the transmission side and the line is cut off. Will be.

In this way, about five minutes have elapsed when the reception of ten sheets has been completed by communication, and in this state, five sheets have been printed. The image data of the sixth to tenth originals is stored in the first buffer memory 26.

When the reception of all pages is completed, the first processor 21 cuts off the line. However, the received data stored in the first buffer memory 26 is transmitted to the second processor 22 even after the line is cut off. The data is sequentially transferred and printed by the serial inkjet printer. But this is not a problem for the user.

In this way, three processors 21 to 23 are provided. In particular, the first processor 21 controls transmission / reception of image data via a communication line, and performs decoding processing of received image data at the time of reception to determine whether there is a bit error. Is checked, and the determination result is returned to the transmitting station. At the same time, the received image data is subjected to a process of deleting only the file as MH encoded data and storing it in the first buffer memory 26,
The processor 22 receives the MH-encoded data from the first buffer memory 26, decodes it, converts it into a printable format, and stores it in the second buffer memory 33 completely asynchronously with the communication. With a simple circuit configuration, it is possible to sufficiently cope with print output by a serial inkjet printer whose speed is lower than the communication speed. Therefore, downsizing and cost reduction can be easily realized.

If printing becomes impossible due to the lack of the recording paper 8 or the like, the second processor 22 cannot process the received data. Accordingly, the data transfer request from the second processor 22 to the first processor 21 is not performed.

For this reason, the first buffer memory 26 sequentially receives data and accumulates received data.
Thus, even if the print output becomes impossible, the data received by the first buffer memory 26 can be stored without any problem.

In the above embodiment, the sub-processor is described as being divided into two as the second and third processors 22 and 23. However, the present invention is not limited to this. The processing of 22 and 23 may be performed by one sub-processor.

In the above-described embodiment, the fill is removed when the MH encoded data received in the first buffer memory 26 is stored. However, the present invention is not limited to this. In some cases, the fill is removed. You may not save it.

[0043]

As described above in detail, according to the present invention, a printer using a printer capable of printing on plain paper whose printing speed is lower than the image receiving speed is used. The present invention can provide a facsimile apparatus which can be dealt with with a relatively simple circuit configuration, and which can surely achieve miniaturization and cost reduction.

[Brief description of the drawings]

FIG. 1 is a perspective view showing one embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 2 is a schematic configuration diagram of the embodiment.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram showing a circuit configuration of the embodiment.

FIG. 4 is a view showing a dot format of print data in the embodiment.

FIG. 5 is an exemplary view for explaining processing of fetching and discharging received data to and from a first buffer memory in the embodiment.

[Explanation of symbols]

11: serial inkjet printer mechanism, 13: inkjet head, 21: first processor (main processor), 22: second processor (sub-processor), 23: third processor (sub-processor), 2
6: first buffer memory, 33: second buffer memory.

──────────────────────────────────────────────────続 き Continued on front page (58) Field surveyed (Int.Cl. ⁷ , DB name) H04N 1/23-1/31

Claims (4)

(57) [Claims] The present invention controls the transmission and reception of image data via a communication line with a printer which prints out received image data and has a printing speed lower than the image receiving speed, and encodes the received image data upon reception. RA once as it was
M, and performs a decoding process on the received image data stored in the RAM to make a pass / fail determination, and returns a determination result to the transmitting station for each page, while the received image data remains encoded. Or the first with the fill removed
And a main processor for storing the received image data from the first buffer memory in a completely asynchronous manner with the communication, decoding and converting the received image data into a printable format, and storing the converted image data in a second buffer memory. A facsimile apparatus comprising a sub-processor for controlling the printer based on data stored in a second buffer memory. 2. A printer that prints out received image data and controls transmission and reception of image data via a communication line with a printer whose printing speed is lower than the image reception speed, and encodes the received image data at the time of reception. RA once as it was
M, and performs a decoding process on the received image data stored in the RAM to make a pass / fail determination, and returns a determination result to the transmitting station for each page, while the received image data remains encoded. Or the first with the fill removed
And a main processor for storing the received image data from the first buffer memory in a completely asynchronous manner with the communication, decoding and converting the received image data into a printable format, and storing the converted image data in a second buffer memory. A sub-processor for controlling the printer based on the data stored in the second buffer memory, wherein the main processor sends the sub-processor to the sub-processor when the printer is in a non-printable state such as out of recording paper. A facsimile apparatus for inhibiting transfer of received image data and continuing to store the received image data in the first buffer memory. 3. A printer that prints out received image data and controls transmission and reception of image data via a communication line with a printer whose printing speed is lower than the image reception speed, and encodes the received image data at the time of reception. RA once as it was
M, and performs a decoding process on the received image data stored in the RAM to make a pass / fail determination, and returns a determination result to the transmitting station for each page, while the received image data remains encoded. Or the first with the fill removed
A first processor that receives received image data from the first buffer memory, decodes the received image data, converts the received image data into a printable format, and stores the received image data in a second buffer memory, completely asynchronously with communication. A facsimile apparatus comprising: a sub-processor; and a second sub-processor for controlling the printer based on data stored in the second buffer memory. And controlling transmission and reception of image data via a communication line with a serial printer which prints out received image data and has a printing speed lower than the image receiving speed.
At the time of reception, the received image data is temporarily stored in a coded state in the RAM, and the received image data stored in the RAM is decoded to determine the quality of the received image data, and a determination result is returned to the transmitting station for each page. A main processor for storing received image data in a first buffer memory in a state in which the received image data has been encoded or in a state in which a file has been further deleted; Receiving and decoding the data, converting the line format image data into a format printable by the serial printer in a vertical and horizontal direction, storing the converted image data in a second buffer memory, and based on the data stored in the second buffer memory. And a sub-processor for controlling the printer.